Manifest Destiny: An Empire of Dirt
by BlueWay
Summary: "War is the motherfucking answer." - Cpl Josh Ray Person, Generation Kill - A Manifest Destiny rewrite.
1. 0-1: The End

**A/N: I've returned.**

* * *

**0-1**

**The End**

* * *

Alnus Hill burned in the night. It burned in the way that nature intends: Completely, to the ground, doing away with the pretenses of the modern world and returning those and what would impress upon it to the Earth. The walls themselves, steel and concrete, melting away beneath fire that burned as hot as the rage of those that had called upon it. It was both the fire of God, and the fire of manmade implements that intended to do one thing, and one thing only: To destroy the enemy.

Three years, six months, and twenty-one days. D-Day plus 1298.

1298\. That number stuck out in the mind of a dark man as he stood on the ground he had once witnessed a massacre on, beneath his very worn boots the bone and blood of several thousand men who did not understand him, or people like him. The greater of two evils came to clash on these fields surrounding Alnus Hill, and, in the irony of it, that man very much knew he now stood in their footsteps. Full-circle.

He dropped the hood made out of the head of a wolf onto his shoulders, the dark of night silhouetting him against the stars as four mechanical, fiber optic tubes had instead been mounted, slid down as he assumed the four eyed visage that gave him the ability to see in the night. Around him, others stood, dressed in the history of the war they waged. A woman wore an eyepatch over one eye as she flicked the safety on her combat rifle to semi, the stitching of a scar on her jaw present in the faded rune casted by a wood elf, now lost. To her side: a man, burly and roughed up, a brown beard complement to sideburns that had been held the sides of his face. He was only thirty, but he had lived one hundred years behind his blue eyes, thumbing in the last rounds into his shotgun as he rose one hand up. Like a chorus a procession rose behind them; the ghosts, the survivors, the wolves and demons that would ride into battle, one last time with them, cloaked in darkness, seen by fire.

"Good effect on target." The dark man had said into the radio attached to his chest rig, the fifty or so behind him that had risen from the dark, cursed earth, similarly donning the vision he had, weapons at the ready.

_ "Vegas Lead copies all. Give them Hell, __**Hitman**__."_

The time was now. This battle was already won the second the defenses had gone silent and the fire had come down on the holiest hill of all the Empire, the screams of a foreign tongue echoing out into the night. They were screams many of them recognized.

The good doctor? The old man? The otaku? The natural born killer? Had they survived that long? Would they fight to the last against them? Questions that one of the men there desperately had wanted to ask God, but instead, uttered this as he walked, cautiously, to the dark man. He was a lanky individual, spiky hair, a slump to his shoulders that gravity seemed to constantly drag down. He was dirty, tired, bags beneath his eyes speaking to a great struggle, a journey that he had set out upon that had costed him very much.

"According to some people," he started, the dark man not even looking at him as the fire reflected all upon them. "Judas was a hitman."

The dark man turned to him. Irony, self-loathing, it dripped from the words that came to him, speaking from the Gospel. Judas, the betrayer, an Apostle, and then the hanged man. The dark man had thought for a few moments. Perhaps Judas was right to be called for with him. He would be hanged, if he had his choice. Though if he was Judas, then that meant, of all things-

"I will never forgive you, your sins." He said in return. "You're not one of us."

So it was like that… With a sigh, breathing in burning air, Judas had resigned himself to his fate, thumbing the safety on his battle rifle as he looked up onto Alnus Hill and saw the last vestiges of a Special Task Force be burned away. The Americans had a story, of a battle fought by dawn's early light…

The bearded man had another story, shotgun barrel poking into the back of Judas, ushering him forward as those held to him followed. He would be the first forward. He, alone, would lead the first charge in that final battle, and he did, dozens and dozens shuffling through, passing by the statue like forms of warfighters that had given their due, and were willing to let them die.

The bearded man had a story from before even the one Judas thought of. It went back into Gospel. "And he, bearing his cross, went forth into a place called the place of skulls: Golgotha. May you go with God. **Inshallah**." he spoke. In cruelty and in jest, in profession and in warning.

Judas had turned around, one last gaze out, looking at the people he had called friends once, at the people who ended up on the other side of the battlefield. "I was always, just, following orders… Do you really want me to die?"

In the distance, the beat of helicopters, the roar of tanks, getting ready to roll behind cover. Modern warfare would never stop. Not for anything, not for anyone. It would never stop, never, until it ate itself alive.

"We're just following orders." The one-eyed woman parroted, more than willing to shoot him, and Judas knew it. For all the death that had been because of them, it had turned the other cheek, finally. "Go."

So Judas went, his rifle up as he approached the fort which he had seen built with his very own eyes, burning down as the remains of the choking battle that had finally tightened around its neck had come forth, and he had been the noose that finally closed it. His followers had nothing more than spears, swords, maybe a hunting rifle if they had been lucky, but it was enough as he had scaled those destroyed walls and seen the blown open artillery and guns, hit by the airstrikes and artillery days and days earlier, unceasing, trying to force the enemy to surrender.

It would never be easy though, not as the heat from the fires came upon all of them, pausing them, forcing them back, a precursor to what truly had been the horror of that night. It was the only thing that could've happened, so many years after they came here. It was the right thing to happen, what was just and holy in that world ordaining it by consequence of Empire. For all his life Judas saw his people burn. No different would be today as he climbed to the top of the defensible positions of Alnus Hill and he looked down.

Dear God. As if the heavens had fallen, or Hell had been raised up. Little stars of white floating along as metal and flesh came together in a union that had turned the world black, buildings and men falling together as fire itself ruled.

And all at once, those who burned, dead men walking, trying their best to make the pain go away, had looked up at the walls at Judas, their eyes popped or blackened, and screamed at him.

They were burning. _They were all burning._


	2. 0-2: Poison

**0-2**

**Poison**

* * *

Itami Youji never thought he would have children. He was in the first half of his thirties when he was roused awake from his apartment on the outskirts of Tokyo, not by his own alarm or ambition, but by a general call for the deployment of his unit. He woke up as men of action always do: not too enthused to be awake.

He was a second lieutenant in the Japanese Self-Defense Force, part of the First Division, tasked with the defense of Tokyo and its surrounding prefectures. A duty no more, no less, important than what it had been described. In that new world, in a world where the threat of an Asiatic war hung over the Pacific, Itami Youji privately grumbled about it. He never intended to become a career military man. His family had never been one for it, and yet, he had wandered into the recruiting office as a young man, seeing it nothing more as the most stable job he could land. That's what he told himself in retrospective. That's not what the truth was.

In the years since he had become a lieutenant, in the new Japan more concerned with self-defense than ever, he had thought that late at night that it had actually happened: The remnants of the North Korean military had come to lash out against Japan for aiding the Imperialist Americans. The only reason why it had been personal, being roused awake that night, wasn't because he had personally been part of the JSDF divisions who had, for the first time in history, deployed in an offensive capacity. It wasn't even because he himself had any strong feelings for the wars of the present, even as a soldier himself; he never saw himself as one, truly. It was only personal because it inconvenienced him. Selfish thought that it was, Itami Youji was not a bad man.

Far from it.

That's why when he had gotten the call, and the reason behind it, he had suited up and ran to the base beneath the starless night.

It's why he didn't even double check his will on the way out, making sure everything was squared away as disaster dawned on Japan that was in an even greater magnitude than a war, or a tsunami.

Things like this: gearing up for natural disaster responses, it hadn't been new to him. Typhoons and earthquakes had been constant part of his life as a Japanese man, on both sides of the service, but this had been different. Far different as at the concrete lineup of men and women who had groggily made their way to base for a disaster response had assembled.

He had felt, in some measure, the earthquake earlier in the day on base as he was filing reports on a recent injury within his section. The man had his foot run over by a vehicle during joint-training with the Americans in country and had returned from that training deployment early. It was just a matter of life now that the Earth was, to his recollection, actively trying to kill humanity. Between the United State's own problem on its west coast between active fault lines and rampant forest fires, to the Middle East where, even before the last war, the sands of the Saudi peninsula had been burying entire cities. At least in Japan he had been used to the earthquakes, and his conscious was clear as he sat still in his seat as the shaking came and went. If it was his problem, it would be tomorrow's Itami's problem.

Unfortunately for him it didn't come to that.

The Commanding Officer had looked as surprised as anyone, for all his fierceness that Itami knew, often taken out on himself, he was now tempered, and, as he read of the script of the paper freshly printed from JSDF High Command, horrified.

"Urgent:" He read off, slowing his words, making sure what he read was absolutely true in his office as the officers all awaited form him. "Prior to deployment to Fukushima Prefecture, all personnel must be provided with potassium iodide pills. Any personnel working without prior application cannot be guaranteed health and safety."

He hadn't even checked where the earthquake had happened earlier today. Fukushima? Again?

Potassium iodide pills? Itami furrowed his thick angular eyebrows at his CO. He only knew them for one reason. He might've been an unremarkable officer, stuck at the bottom of the rung, but he was capable of more. To be pulled to that level of exertion beyond what he had wanted in his life, it was deemed punishment by an officer, long ago who presided by him. The training he had, the experience and lessons that were forced upon him, it, today, manifested in him knowing potassium iodide pills were anti-radiation supplements.

It dawned on him, hit him harder than if he had been shot: Where he was going, what had happened over a decade ago.

"What happened, sir?" Itami asked for all of the officers there.

To say was to admit insanity; a damage far worse than any terrorist would ever dream of doing, self-inflicted by Japan now.

"You'll be briefed on site, Lieutenant Itami." The CO tried to handwave as he moved asides papers, trying to move onto the next thing.

"Did the North Koreans detonate a _dirty_ bomb? The Chinese?" Itami raised his voice, raised the stakes. "Are we at war?"

"What?"

Of his training, it drew from, both in policy and by instruction, from nothing less than Delta Force and the Green Berets overseas. It was why he had known at all. "Potassium iodide pills were used by the American Special Forces in Iran sir, when they were hunting down their nukes. What happened sir?"

Iran had imploded, and with it, Peace in the Middle East. An American-led coalition gone to fight that final war in the Middle East for the sake of it. Whether it had been because of American or Western interference in the country's internal affairs, or via the natural progress of a liberal and progressive student population, Iran had torn itself apart in an uprising that, once again, sent the world into a downward spiral. It hadn't been Operation Iraqi Freedom again, or the Forever War, spilled over from Afghanistan and the rest of the Middle East, it had been a primal war, a war without the ideological defenses as provided by an American narrative. It had been three decades since the War on Terror began, and the justification for what had become of the Middle East held no water anymore.

In that new world, from that new world, their lessons were taught to countries seemingly unassociated.

Lieutenant Itami knew that-

The base commander gruffed his voice as he ripped the band-aid. "Radiation from the New Fukushima NPPs have been reported. The _waste sites_ were destroyed. We're deploying as many people as we can to help contain the spread of contamination.

Itami Youji thought he would never have children. Not because he wasn't ready, not because he truly did not desire them, not because of some overarching stigma of Japanese society. No, he thought he would never have children because of what happened to him that day. What happened to him, and thousands of others in the JSDF as the sun rose over Japan and revealed the visible damage of a nuclear disaster.

* * *

It was half a day earlier, toward the tail-end of a shift at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, and all hell had broken loose. The Shift Director hadn't been an incompetent piece of work; he had been a measured, responsible man who knew his responsibilities the moment the seismographs had went off and the redundant systems in place had already started the shutdown of Fukushima Daiichi. A decade earlier had made him know the mistakes of his predecessor, and as the rumbling began, the countdown started as he had peeked out from beneath his desk and started looking around the control room of the reactor.

All of his men and women beneath him on that shift, they looked to him, but there was no need as he finally stood and looked at what info he could get, between the dust kicked up and the flashing lights of the display. The power was still on, the shockwaves that wracked through the room beginning minutes earlier, stopping only now as they all sheltered in place. "We've trained for this, begin the reactor shutdown. **We know what we have to do.**"

In that brightly lit control room it had seemed askew. He was only an adult still finishing his masters in nuclear theory when Fukushima had gone up, so very far away from his university in Hokkaido. Every moment after that day in the practice, where he was going, it was hammered within him about the exactness of what they had to do to prevent such another disaster from happening.

Fukushima had just begun to rebuild after all, more than a decade later. The plants had still been operational that entire time, but the surrounding region? A ghost town.

TEPCO, the company responsible for the reactors and the subsequent disaster in 2011, had been very busy on site as of late, providing infrastructure, cleaning up the last of the wastes that had been a product of the original nuclear disaster. The worst since Chernobyl.

The original facilities, the original nuclear power plant had been decommissioned in shortly after 2011. Times had changed though: Nuclear power was needed now more than ever, even if it meant working on hallowed ground.

If he had any say in it, he wouldn't let another disaster happen under his watch as he went to the plant phone, the damage reports immediately being siphoned in from the different facility sections. Injuries, of course, but as long as no one had fallen into the damn cooling pool and that had been okay.

"9.1." The seismograph station had reported to him. Another one. Just as bad as the one years ago. "It was close. Closer than 2011."

The entire building seized and then breathed out at once, the mechanical sounds intimidating, but not unexpected.

He overheard some of the staff. "SCRAM confirmed in all units!"

The control rods that acted as the nuclear fission's breaks had been inserted into their cores, ceasing their reaction as the arduous task of making sure the cores didn't overheat began.

"How much time do we have?" The Director asked.

"Hour and a half, max."

He sucked in his breath. Barely, just barely enough time to make sure everything was in place. The new generators for this facility had beat back the mistakes of the old by being raised much higher above ground, along with their routing channels. What was left then was making sure all non-essential personnel were evacuated to high ground. "Alright, thank you." The phone went back down as he sucked in his breath. "You know the procedure, after all is done, tertiary staff evacuate."

A strong affirmative had rushed around the room as the Director looked to his side, his young assistant making sure all department heads were reporting correctly and everything was going smoothly. He thumbed at him. "Yeah?"

"We have to go check on the Superintendent. Make sure everything's good on his end."

The young man nodded as the two left the control room, their one-piece hazard suits, shining white in the sterile corridors of the new Fukushima plant. Loose objects from trays and people who hadn't held on strong enough had been on the floor, but Japan had been a nation of earthquakes, so it wasn't anything anyone there hadn't dealt with before. The intensity was of note, but the length? Longer than most expected, dangerous in that regard.

It was a short walk over to the administration wing of the plant, the Director and his man stopping shortly where they could to make sure everything was well and going to procedure. The injured were being attended to, and non-essential personnel had been wafting out and away into safety as those that had to remain stood by, waiting for the waves. Staff on the outer seawalls had been most important, securing the bluff which Fukushima Daiichi sat on.

"Reports from the helicopters are calling in something fierce, sir." The Director's radio had rung. "We don't know-"

"We have to try."

"Yes sir!"

The two men had looked at each other worriedly as they finally made their way to administration. The plans birthed from the worst radioactive disaster since Chernobyl had been mentally burned into each of them: If they did it to their best ability, then if something more happened, it was beyond them. On a normal day the walk from the control center to the offices would've been no more than five minutes, but on that day there was procedure: departments and sections walked through, cleared out, and if vital, making sure had been buttoned up and ready for the disaster coming. This plant had been made and designed not to repeat the disasters of the past, and as far as the Director could tell everything was going perfectly. This margin of error was practiced for, and even if it took him an hour and a half to make sure it was all okay, he did.

The checklist was important beyond words, which was why as they shuffled through the various offices at the end, they had hoped that the Superintendent in his office had done his part.

He opened the door, and saw something he didn't anticipate that day:

The Superintendent sent from TEPCO had been a particular man, shrewd, but a businessman that the Director as an engineer knew was necessary by some measure. He had thought of him lowly. Not lowly enough however to see him step onto his rolling chair, with a rope tied all the way to the ceiling and a noose around his neck and not do something about it.

The initial shock of seeing a man do this on that day of days, with what was happening, it paused to the two men as the Superintendent was shocked to see them open the door, panicking as the chair beneath his feet gave way and the rope around his neck began its purpose.

With a shriek the two men had immediately rushed toward him, the taller Assistant grasping onto the Superintendent's legs as the chair clattered away, the Director hopping onto the Superintendent's desk and, seeing where the rope was connected, breaking it down from the fan, the entire unit come from the ceiling in a messy clatter of dust and bolts.

The loud crash had narrowly avoided the Superintendent and the assistant, the two collapsing on the floor as the Director ripped the rope off of his neck.

"What are you doing man?!" It only dawned on the Director it wasn't what he was doing that he questioned about, but why. It was why his concern turned into rage as the Superintendent spit up the build up in his throat from his momentary strangling only to be pinned against the ground by the Director. "What's going on?!"

"We were too late! Too late. We didn't think-"

"What?! What?!" The Director screamed down at him, his own spit hitting the older man's face only to fall into his wrinkles.

"Get out of here. Get as far away as you can!"

The Director had hoisted the man up, only to pin him on the table. "Jesus Christ, what's going on?! What's gotten into you?! The plant is secure we're shutting down-"

"It's not the plant!" The Superintendent finally let out. "It's not the plant!" He spoke, screamed, as if a man mad. Denial was in his eyes and it translated out into the air, a tension, a weight, put on the two engineers that they didn't know had been there. It was as if they had just turned the corner and saw something new, something they could've never known.

"What?" The Director raised an eyebrow, a darkness coming over him, a tiredness that took his breath away. "What's the problem then?"

The Superintendent had sputtered as his mouth betrayed him, no sound coming out. "God dammit man!" The Assistant had raised his fist. "What's going on!? What's TEPCO keeping from us!?"

The Superintendent said nothing as he glanced out the windows. Glanced toward the great white structures that had surrounded Fukushima for years since the disaster. The headache of containment of the initial waste and the groundwater that had became irradiated. All of it had been sucked back up and, as best any human could, kept in containment in those great white tanks that were borrowed from the oil fields of the Middle East. The entire plant might've been designed to prevent another disaster, but the remnants of the last still remained.

"The waste facilities?! What's wrong with them?! Aren't they-"

"They're not! We've been trying to quadruple hull the basins but- but, we thought we would've found a solution by now!"

"A solution to- What do you mean?!" The Director had known far and away what he meant. It felt as if he was shot. If he was shot and killed and damned.

The sirens rose up and out, as if a war was coming. One cursory look out and the Director had seen something all Japanese were intimately familiar with: the swell of a tsunami, cresting over the levies. There was no way to stop the waves of that size, it would be impractical to do so, so that is why the building sized, frothy mass of sea water that was known as a tsunami had made landfall over the NPP in such a way it was designed to take. Nature was never mankind's enemy though, in the end.

The entire facility rumbled and groaned as the sound and measure of the monstrous waves came through, the Superintendent screaming the entire way as he was held down and the Director only looked out of the office's window to see the debris filled waters of the facility's alleys shift through, car alarms going off in a cacophony as he glanced out to the hills around. People were safely evacuated to them. He had done his job right.

Though it was always, always a possibility to do everything right and still fail. The entire world shook, thumbing the barrier of sanity as they all held their heads down and the sound of rushing water came not as liquid, but as thunder. Metal crashing, car alarms blaring as they were undoubtedly picked up and thrown. This was something that was planned for, so all the Director could do was put his hopes in that and let it pass.

It would've been easier to think of their families then and there, to hope that they had made it to high ground. Everyone who lived on the coast, especially in the area of Fukushima, knew the procedures for evacuation. What had been right however was to worry about this very power plant. The power that was endowed within it had come at such a great cost, their failure would be lethal.

"I need an update from all department heads! Get me damage reports!" The Director had taken his radio again as he stumbled to a stand, going to the window and seeing the murky water several feet higher than he thought, burying the first floor at least of the larger reactor facility, its smoke stack still standing defiant. They were trapped now, but it was no matter, the entire facility could be accessed above predicted waterlines.

His radio buzzed off again, the reports promising at least, but the Superintendent had still been squirming beneath the Assistant, his tie becoming undone as he finally held his arm against the back of his neck and pushed. "Keep squirming and see what happens!"

"Go ahead and just kill me!" The Superintendent's face rubbed against the dusty rugged floor, debris from the roof still floating in particulates in the air, noose still around his neck.

The Assistant had only looked up to the Director, with one flick of his chin motioning to the Superintendent's desk. In one haul the Assistant had picked up the older man, throwing him onto the surface of the wooden bureau, a suicide note brushed asides along with the rest of anything left on it.

As a Director, of course he had his fair share of strongarming people, his engineers who had slacked from time to time, uppity interns, but never would he actually think-

His back had hit the table with a breaking thud, the younger man that had been the Assistant former JSDF, his hands holding the man's shoulders down as his head bounced against the hardwood.

"You're gonna tell us what's going on, or we'll tear your teeth out!" The Assistant had been more than willing, his own teeth grit through. "People's lives are on the line!"

"It doesn't matter anymore! There's nothing we can do!"

"But what, dammit! What?!"

"The waste tanks! They're gonna give!"

Again the two engineers had looked out at those white tanks, adorned with hazard signs, sterile, dripping with debris as the waves had come over them as well. There had been so many, they lined the streets just outside of the facility like a uniform village.

"Why?!"

"I- I-…"

"If you don't tell us we're gonna drag you over there and make you show us! Is that what you want?!"

"What?! You can't-!"

"Then let it out! What did you do?! What did TEPCO do?!"

The answer had been so easy: We saved money.

But if that was the answer the Superintendent had given he knew he would've been killed right there. Because that was the why of it down to its core. They saved money. His mouth had quivered trying to formulate an answer, but even that, with so much on the line, he had failed as he had fallen silent, the two engineers looking to each other and deciding.

The Director spoke into his radio. "Utilities? I need a boat over to Admin."

"I'm not going! I'm not going!" The Assistant had punched the Superintendent as he tried to scramble away, the secret in plain view would be his grave. From afar people were liable to mistake the waste storage for the great oil tanks of refineries the world over. The final remnants of a nuclear disaster years ago: poisoning all that were in its presence.

* * *

They dragged him by his very heels out to the water tanks, through halls that had been toppled over by the shocks of the earthquake, office supplies on the floor. Even as the waves of the tsunami kept rolling by there had been enough manpower present to get one of the emergency motorized dinghies out. They were provided for some impromptu rescue and transportation work, but that wasn't their goal today as a small fleet of them had gathered when the Director called, only to see him and the Assistant drag their greater boss and throw him into the rubber boat. The water level had gone over the fences cordoning off the waste facilities, they having to have boarded from a window out, however when they got there the imposing height of the tanks had still stood, and, more than that, they were **leaking**. Details hidden from afar brought to bear.

It was good, then, the Director thought that they had dragged the TEPCO rep to the very base of one of the water tanks that had held the debris and contaminated water of the Fukushima disaster, still yet to be processed and recycled. TEPCO had made a promise to decontaminate and eventually clean up the final remnants. As for how? A matter of secrecy, given the radioactive and nuclear nature of the cleanup. No one wanted to find out if the material for a dirty bomb was within grasp for whoever accessed or was privy to the waste cleanup.

The boats had pulled up as close as they would dare, the murky water streaming down below them. The radioactive warning badges clamped onto all of their clothing starting to crinkle. For the Director's boat, it was right up against it.

The Superintendent's shoes were rubbed raw because the two men had dragged him out of the building to the very base of a water tank, the debris of an Earthquake unignored as he was thrown against the rubber floor of the rubber dinghy the three of them shared.

Around them, staff who had joined them on their own boats to check the damage around the facility had started murmuring, panicking.

"What happened you bastard! What do we have to do?!" The Director yelled at him as he laid on his side, the steel of the tank echoing seemingly as the Superintendent crumpled beneath him. "Why weren't we told?!"

"It was too expensive! We hoped for the best!" Somewhere between hysteria and despair, the lack of care and the fear of death. It filled his voice as if a man who knew his own unkind faith and had been hopeless to stop it. Not a complete thought; or, at least one that the engineers wanted to hear as the Director rose his voice to fight against the disaster happening around them, the rush of waves further into the countryside only as loud as the sound of water leaking continually from the whites of the tank.

"I will **fucking **drown you right now if you don't tell me exactly what's wrong with these tanks! There is no reason why they should be leaking!"

He wasn't trained to deal with them, only the running facility and the reactiors.

"Go ahead! Drown me! It's what's going to happen to us all! That's because we're the lucky ones!"

The assistant's work shoes had been a far cry from his combat boots, but they had done well to wedge his heel into the man's mouth and then push, a distinct crack heard as several teeth had fallen out and the first screams of Fukushima rang out. All eyes had been on the Director's boat.

"I can make it hurt a lot more!" The Assistant had warned, had threatened, had promised.

He spit up blood onto the boat, pooling at its center as he began madly laughing, the Assistant taking him by the collar, half considering throwing him into the water or against the steel of the tanks.

"Aren't these things supposed to be drained out?!" The Assistant had pointed at some of the leaks, some as tall as the tank itself. They were all told that they would be done away with soon, seeing as the waste had been processed and already half of it shipped out to some confidential location, hinted to them at least to be the same place where Germany had been disposing of its nuclear fuel.

As he was held by his neck the Superintendent finally answered. "We built tanks underground! Sarcophaguses for the waste beneath the tanks that would drain down! Constantly keeping it in check with a pressurized manifold bubble! It would eventually drain the entire above ground tanks and we could dismantle them! Nothing can leak if it's being contained by pressure! That's why it only made sense to build it next to a facility that would supply constant power to it!"

_TEPCO had been hiding their mistakes. _Literally burying their secrets.

The Director had screamed before yelling at him. "You were supposed to build this thing to withstand future disasters!"

"It was easier said than done! We couldn't find a proper way to dispose of, of, _all of this!" _The Superintendent manically raised his arms to the sky, to the entire procession of tanks that surrounded them.

**"It needed to be done!" **The Director yelled again, so hoarsely that he wanted to spit blood.

The Superintendent recoiled as if attacked, begging for his life, "We thought it was going faster than we thought, so we began stripping down some of the tank material lining…"

The Director had to put it into words. It was the only way he could process it. His very first days had been in the backdrop to the dismantling of some of the tanks under those very same reasons. The only difference now was that he knew it was a lie. "You're telling me the feed water containment was stripped down too?!" Stripped down, laid bare, it wasn't a bomb, but rather a force of nature waiting to just be reclaimed.

"I was never supposed to tell you." The Superintendent had admitted as he was dropped, the Assistant speechless as he spun his head around, seeing nothing but containment tanks and nowhere to run.

A thousand miles a minute, and the Director's mind would never find the best, right, correct solution to all this. It was impossible. The damage was done. Still, he had to do something at least, raising his hands to his radio: "I need as many pumps to the waste facilities now! We're gonna try to-"

"We can't do that! We have to get the warning out! We have to tell people!" The Assistant had grabbed his Director's shoulders, shaking him, stopping him from summoning even more people here. They themselves shouldn't have been here, not if this danger was so close to them they could breath it in. "We need to get out of here!"

The drip, the sound of hissing water, the leaks had been ongoing and going, dripping into the flood waters beneath.

"How much time do they have!?" There was a look in the eyes of the Director as he begged the Superintendent for an answer. Though everyone there who had heard the conversation knew the answer: Not enough. It would never be enough as the horror erupted from his mouth, trying to articulate what was going to happen. "If those things blow-!"

If those things blow, they would've unloaded the contents of their hulls along the torrent of water making its way inward. A problem already brought to bear as water, even before the event, sank into the ground below.

Carried by the tsunami, it would've carried radioactive material miles inland, taking out farmland and residential areas just by the power of the waves alone. When it left, then, was when the radioactive material would leave itself behind, coating the land with radioactivity, that, at its source, measured at 53,000 Roentgens. The fatal level for the average person being 550 Roentgens. Nothing would be wiped clean by the receding waves, the nuclear sludge both from the old waste and new would coat a swath of inland Japan with an irradiated apocalyptia a mere one hundred miles away from Tokyo. Every single piece of debris that would be taken by the waves now left irradiated like nothing else ever seen on that Earth, seeping itself below the surface into the very ground water of Japan itself before the world would realize what was happening.

That's was what the Director would've said if had it not been for the great metal creaking, his worst fear manifested and, in a toxic sludge wave beyond what even judgement day might've brought, killed them as the earth below them opened up as aftershocks began, taking them whole: swallowed by water that, if they survived the drowning, would've thrashed them by debris and broken their bodies. Surviving that: the poisoning, the sickness, of the remnant of a nuclear disaster reborn. Their bodies would travel with the wave and the prophecy carried out.

It was a disaster that was both manmade and natural, as the waves crashed over the land, the breadth of events not able to be taken in until after the first day, and by that time, it had already been too late. Every car, every brick, everybody, that got caught up in that brown tidal wave, became nothing more, and nothing less, than a conduit for a catastrophe. The echoes of Chernobyl had found its home here, in the Fukushima Prefecture of Japan. Home to nearly two million people, the third largest prefecture in all of Japan, it was now fundamentally poisoned.

* * *

Only one person in the commander's room of Lieutenant Itami's base had understood that.

Her father had been a farmer. She knew right and well the area they were going to. Farm land in Japan had already been sparse, and for as much efficiency they could consolidate with renewed agricultural developments, it didn't hide the fact that agricultural was at a premium that Japan desperately needed.

"Sir, how much has been affected?" She asked urgently, pointing at the map of the region.

The CO knew better than most, but he wanted to be optimistic. He wanted to pray that only-

"Fukushima Prefecture, obviously, portions of Tochigi, Ibaraki, and Nigata Prefectures are also affected, and, as the waves drew back out into sea, we will see radiological damage along the northern coasts as the currents drag them out-"

The female captain's eyes sunk within her head, the white of her eyes coming to knowledge that she wish she didn't have. "Where, show me."

"Captain it isn't your respon-"

"Commander, please." She insisted, almost seizing the man's desk as Itami also leaned in. The officer corps deserved to know what they were getting into. They wouldn't leave without knowing, how could they? To be sent into what might've become a radioactive wasteland? He pulled up the map on his table, and, with one stroke of his pencil, made a circle.

Japan was bisected, cut in half, and the area caught in the center, it had been the worst possible place as the woman clamped her mouth with her hands.

She didn't see what was on the map, she saw the future: She saw famine, the rise of cost of food exponential, hunger and sickness, an entire nation losing its bread basket.

"Captain?" She was one of the ones that had been to war in that new world. She had been in North Korea, with the JGSDF expeditionary unit offering aid, and, at times, defending against the North Korean counterattacks. She knew war, and yet she found horror in tonight. The CO asked what she saw.

Instead she turned to those around her. "We have to go. We _have to_. We have to save as much as we can."

She pleaded. She pleaded not for her life, not for the life of those around her, but for the life of Japan's future, and all those yet unborn. Japan was at risk of becoming sterile, by hunger, and by radiation.

"I'm getting communications from the Americans. Their Seventh Fleet is already away, hospital ships and HAZMAT units enroute."

"We can't wait for them." The Captain had hurriedly said. "**I don't care if I get cancer**, Captain. We have to go, _and we have to go now_."

She was younger than Itami, and yet his superior. Though to be fair, anyone could've been. He didn't have the enthusiasm or the aspirations of command, for, perhaps, the very reasons that made the Captain almost swell to tears before the CO. Responsibility fell onto her shoulders, and she did not know what it mean to bear it until today.

How horrible it made her face, and how much it reminded Itami of why he was only a lieutenant. He sought an easy life for himself, and the life that was forced upon this young woman, it was not a kind life now.

"I'll go with her." Itami said, stepping forward. "**It's the right thing to do**."

One by one, officers of the JSDF stepped forward. The mission of the Self-Defense Force might've changed as years gone by, to today, but here and now, the purity of their mission was their pride. They were Japanese, and the Japanese people needed them.

Throughout Japan, the same story over and over: of people who knew better, who would, despite a danger of a force that the Japanese alone knew in history, because it was the right thing to be done. Because if they didn't, the innocent would die with no one trying for them.

Lieutenant Itami Youji was simple man, a good man. He was an otaku he'd freely admit, even as he aged into his thirties, and would go as so far to state his membership in the JSDF was in pursuit of that interest. But he was a man still, and he knew what was at stake.

"I cannot guarantee if you go out there and deploy for your health and safety." The base commander wasn't telling, he was pleading as his knuckled turned white with the memo.

And yet not one of them stepped back. The Japanese of today had been a new breed, born and raised with changing times. A certain understanding of the Japanese state ingrained in them as the world changed around the nation. Whatever it was to each of them in that room, it meant that it was at stake tonight, tomorrow, next week, next month, and, very possibly, for the years onward.

"Several HAZMAT units are already on site, in helicopters, trying to pick up people stranded." The commander had felt as if he was resigning his people to death. "If you should rally your men, if they shall go, understand that-"

"They are our responsibility, and their responsibility to volunteer, yes." Another office spoke, earning a solid nod from the commander.

"Link up with the first responders. Radio in to me when departing about your numbers, and I'll hand you off to the local division command." He pointed at several officers. "You, you can't go. You have to remain and wait for the rest of the men and the supplies to be delivered."

The rest had rendered one final salute to their commander, and he had saluted back as, with the permission of their sir, they had taken back running to their base's staging point.

The young woman had taken command so easily, fury and fire in her throat as she had taken a megaphone and outlined, on a stack of crates, yelling out to the hundred and more gathering servicemembers, what was at stake, and where they were going. Perhaps more important was her _**why.**_

"If you have children, this might be even more important!" She yelled out. "If we don't do what we can now, they might starve in their future!" There was pain in her voice: the pain of being a mother. "If I don't go, what will I tell my child?! This is something **we have to do**!"

Itami Youji might've never borne children. Though that did not mean he had not been responsible for them, that night, as service members raised their arms and volunteered as the helicopters of the JSDF found the helipads of their base. There had been too many to carry.

"Lieutenant Itami."

"Captain?" The woman had been among the first to go, she addressing the lieutenant before she boarded a chopper with her men.

"I'll go first. Rally the second group. If I find you slacking off I swear to god I'll-"

"I'm with you, captain." Itami's tall and square face did not betray the seriosity in his eyes: He was serious, and that was enough for her as she sat back into the chopper and made a circle with her fingers in the air, Itami backing off with the rest of the volunteers and the waiting officers for the next batch of choppers, those filled taking off into the air, and toward the north.

Every single helicopter in Japan, it felt, was rallied, civilian and military: moving north, picking up first responders to answer the call. The dead of night turned into the early morning and the deep purple skies as Itami's choppers found themselves, taking him and his men out north toward Fukushima.

The disaster of the Gojira films lied about destruction of the Japanese landscape. Not as Itami himself bore witness to a destruction he had never seen before on rural Japan:

Lush green pathways of the utilitarian and idyllic Japanese countryside, host to the population of Japan not beholden to the modern city life, hinted at in slice-of-life anime Itami knew, was gone. Disaster movies the world over, depicting the end of the world, got it all wrong. No fires. No towering buildings toppling over. No monsters or explosions. Just color seeped from the world and replaced with what looked like a stew of homes and the utilities of everyday life, moving along a current provided by a sludge of grey and debris.

While he waited for his chopper, the first Geiger counters were delivered, issued to as many officers as they could. The sound they made could never be properly recorded by fiction as slowly, the tick, the scratch, slowly building up, emanating from their devices, had started. Unstoppable: like the rising into the sky, they rose and rose like a scream of the earth.


	3. 0-3: They Came as Romans

**0-3**

**They Came as Romans**

* * *

**20XX AD, Summer**

**Tokyo, Chuo Ward, Ginza**

**11:50 AM**

* * *

**What would become known as...**

**The Battle of Ginza**

* * *

The name that people called him sometimes, it created a certain expectation: "JK". At six-foot three, 170 pounds, people assumed him to be a funny man despite his imposing form (at least in Japan). In private company, he was liable to be amiable, and so it wasn't that far off from the truth. He wasn't rapturously funny or witty, his upbringings didn't exactly feed well into an abundance of humor, however he wasn't dry or stale. He was just a normal, measured man, which, all things considered, was impressive when compared to how he had gotten that nickname.

His real name had been Kristian Ridgeway Emerson, his first name a distortion of a very popular faith which he had taken in vain as the first words he said in boot camp:

_"Jesus Christ!"_ As was the response to being scared by the Drill Sergeant.

_"How dare you take the name of JC in vain!" _The DI responded back.

A colorful exchange later and suddenly the name JC was his own, and eventually, given the odd use of K in his name, it had turned into JK. "Kay" for short. Words were often in short supply in tense situations.

He had seen more than his share in the last year.

He had seen more than his share now, eyes open, staring up at a Japanese sky, the skyscrapers of Tokyo raising toward those heavens as Hell broke loose.

Someone screaming his name had certainly woken him from his innocent dozing on a bench in downtown Ginza, right up against a convenience store whose occupants had stepped out of the doorway to look down the street.

"Kay! Kay!"

A rush of people, a stampede, had come to the man in question first as he stumbled forward, trying to keep his standing as a worried people pushed through him, screaming, a distant sound like a coming freight train approaching down those metropolitan streets of Asia's largest city.

38 million people lived there, and, despite it all, one man that Emerson did recognize found him as the crowd threatened to steal his wits and breath, his head unconsciously swinging toward the voice that called his name!

"Dammit Kay!" Hands reached out from that stampede to his shoulders, the rush blocking out the source of the chaos they were running from. Dragged by his heels almost into the entryway of that convenience store, the world returned to him along with his senses, rough palmed hands coming to Emerson's face and shaking it.

The man was dazed, obviously, shaken awake by something beyond his comprehension.

Cameron Bonifaz Masterson would do something to rectify it. "You with me man?"

They were friends, regardless of how roughly Emerson shoved Masterson's hands away from his face, the man nodding roughly in affirmative as his vision cleared and saw Masterson how he was:

He was, generally, vaguely bigger than Emerson, his shoulders square and broad, body built from years on an American frontier. He hailed from Texas. Not necessarily a town or city, but just Texas itself. His upbringings made it as such. His skin was rough, his blonde hair usually, actually, dirty.

Now they were bloody.

It was that blood that brought Emerson back to full coherence and the two men plant themselves against the wall.

It was Emerson's turn to get handsy with Masterson, the man hitting the glass wall against the wall of people running away, the blood that came from down the back of his shoulder staining the clean surface before Emerson forced the man down to a crouch, if only so he could get a good look at what the hell had caused the man's already disgustingly ironic lewd anime shirt to be ruined.

Masterson had, even as Emerson tore the back of his shirt to get a look at his right shoulder, peered around the corner, keeping an eye for a threat he was dreading to tell.

That question came fast as Emerson saw the man's bare skin, the hole just right of his shoulder and saw the broken, and yet embedded wooden rod of-

"Who the _fuck _shot you with an arrow?!"

Masterson returned his bloodied hands to his head once, dried, rubbing his head once before yelling back in response: "Cosplayers gone wild how the _fuck _am I supposed to know?!" Masterson knew exactly what he saw before he turned a ran. Before an arrow bounced off someone else and lodged itself in his back.

Masterson knew exactly what he saw, and seeing was believing as the roar of horror was replaced the beat of war drums. The blare of horns, and all that pomp and power of an unseen army was in the air as the roar of monsters came from overhead. Literal monsters of a winged variety and made the air beneath its wings bellow and people collapse.

Reality was fickle, flesh and metal brought to bear and given shape to animals seen only in fantasy.

They came as Romans.

"Holy _shit_." The words came out Emerson less a breath, more as a knee jerk response.

Better or worse, that was how we responded, losing focus on a bleeding Masterson, and instead looking up at the sky and the silhouettes of red wyverns come to terrorize those below. No trick of the light, mastery of some practical effect, or pure hallucination would be able to explain why Emerson, a rational man, a man of reasonable intelligence, saw those dragons above as real. He wasn't the only ones as those in the street just ran and ran away from the Heart of Ginza, and, as Emerson finally looked down, the heart of an Army.

In their worst nightmares, it was the Chinese military roaring down Japanese streets, creating a warzone of modern warfare that would end the world. The United States military and Japan's own Self Defense Force, the _Jietai, _had prepared for decades for it to happen, brought upon by just one incident that could've been as arbitrary as a fishing boat capsizing in the wrong territory. New ROE, contingencies, tactics, equipment and considerations drawn up in the light of experience brought on by the Second Korean War just four years ago.

Warfare had come to Asia in the end of both South and North Korea, and as Japan held its breath for the inevitability for some sort of confrontation with China, something else had emerged right in its very heart.

"Cosplayers gone wild!" Masterson breathed out hard again, standing back up and stacking up against that convenience store entry way, ushering in his best Japanese for those in the store to stay inside. "You seeing what I'm seeing Kay?!"

Ogres, beasts, legion, dragons. Romans and monsters. Phalanxes and forward marches.

The dead in the street.

Emerson knew what the dead looked like. He saw it firsthand. He had been well acquainted with the prospect of his own death, but right now it all seemed so foreign as he rationalized it in his head again and again:

Dead civilians lined the streets of Ginza: those too slow to run away or caught by arrows. The reason? The Roman Empire had emerged, somehow, someway, in the middle of Japan's heart, on that summer's day.

There was nothing more to consider. To think about it would be to go mad. To do was the only thing that any of those two men could do as they looked beyond those hundreds and hundreds of Romans, intermingled with their archaic machines of war and fantastical beings that stood on two legs, and saw something.

Stone, like the pantheons of Rome, pillars that were impressive even when contrasted with the glass and steel of a modern city.

A Gate. From its mouth emerged more from a blackness that it seemed to swallow, shadows upon shadows concealing the fact that more and more soldiers were coming from it, more Legionnaires then any of them could take on.

Maybe, right there, right now, with nothing but their clothes, Emerson and Masterson stood no chance. Those that ran? Infinitely less so. Not like this.

The cruelty of it was revealed when one of those great Wyverns saw that rushing crowd of people like a stream, the ass end of that large street wide group just only now passing that convenience store, and saw it fit to do something that Emerson would only pray, hoped, that he would never seen done.

Air support was the same, no matter where applied.

If napalm stuck to kids, as the song went back during the era of the Vietnam War, then fire itself did that and more.

It came in like a fighter craft from the World Wars, in a dive, a strafe, right down the center of the road. Only vaguely did Emerson see a rider on it, directing its attack.

The very first time Kristian Emerson, Bronx-born and raised, had seen Hell, it had been on the streets of Ginza as that Wyvern opened its mouth and blew a red-hot nightmare from it.

Men, women, children, were swallowed whole by a flame that he, nestled in the entry way of that store, escaped. All that meant was that he had to bare witness to what happened when fire touched flesh, and fried people where they stood.

They became statues, monument, melting into concrete as charred flesh cocooned them all.

He turned around, seeing the wide eyes of both Masterson and those who had taken shelter inside of the store. He pointed once as the wyvern saw them all.

"Run!"

Masterson had no time for the door to open, so he kicked it in a glassy crash, basically diving into the store as the whipping waves of air of a beast flying toward them reared its ugly head. Those inside had screamed in their native tongue, getting behind the counter of the store in the back as the manager desperately pried open the back-access way to the alley. It was a crowd too much, and before long, another great metal crash was heard as the two men tried to keep those caught in there with them out the back.

It came like an explosion: the great head of that creature bashing into the store, sending almost all of them to the floor.

The surrealness of having a dragon charge at them was cruelly wiped away as the great body of that giant lizard smashed against the building, its head diving in the same way as Masterson and Emerson. Crammed inside, its head thrashed around shelves and cases, sending items flying like shrapnel.

Infernal growling and the most morbidly hot breath the two soldiers had ever smelled had been revealed as the dragon opened its mouth in the confined space, its head shaking around as its neck had caught itself by the frame of what used to be the storefront. There was ample room for it to move its head around, the glowing yellow eyes and the very real scales inches from the collapsed men on the floor, glass and debris digging into their back.

There was now nothing to do but fight. Not with civilians still in the store trying to clamber their way out the back door.

On the ground the men had ended up besides each other as the dragon tried to move its mouth to envelop them in the small space, the great noise it made thrashing about outside with its wings deafening.

The two pair of legs had gone to the dragon's chin, futilely trying to push it away, but the only force those pair of legs had had pushed the men away, giving them enough momentum to get on their feet and stand eye to eye with the dragon. Or, at least, its right eye.

Eye to eye with the beast, any pretense that this hadn't been real was sent out the window as they found their weapons in their hands: broken bottles and anything blunt that had fallen to the floor. Maybe if this had been a tank, something tangible to modern warfare, they would've known what to do.

The rider had been yelling in a foreign language, trying to get into the shop off its beast's back, but the dragon had been too chaotic, dealing with two men it had very much had the right to eat for breakfast, staring them down.

Its yellow cornea looked at them, and for the first time in his life Emerson knew what it was like to be on the food chain.

The fist that came didn't come for it however. Emerson balled his fist, only to tap Masterson's shoulder fast. "Out! Now!"

The two of them threw themselves over the counter as they heard its rider dismount, to squeeze through and give chase. Those who had been caught inside had finally made their way out, leaving Emerson and Masterson to clamber out, throwing shelves and supplies in their wake. The screams began as they returned to open air, this time the sound of dragons and flames, of _war_ existing for the first time in Tokyo ever since-

History repeated, and in a very odd fashion that day as the two men turned around only to see a Roman stand before them, speaking his language. In his hand: a weapon. Not a knife, not a gun, but a sword. A gladius.

Several feet in front of them the three men paused, oddities to one another as the very image of something that came from history put itself in front of the two Americans, lost in Ginza. As lost as the Roman before them.

"Come on fucker, let's throw down!" Masterson had been more than ready to fight, the Roman standing his ground as he looked. Two versus one, devil in the details. His face was taken in by both of them, he was an older man: one of experience. His armor had been plated and shaped like a chest, abs and all molded and formed on it. It hadn't been clean, there had been dents on it, his helmet bronze and plated and classically covered his face in all but a t-form, letting his eyes and mouth bear their whites at them.

"You fucking two-bit Guido prick. Come on partner!" Masterson had yelled back, his throat hoarse, his accent out. He wanted to kill this man because he was subject to be killed, then and there. It was only fair. Emerson knew that feeling better than most, even before he had become a soldier.

He knew that feeling of wanting to kill someone badly.

Joining the Army wasn't an attempt for him to fulfill that, but rather, to reconcile and heal.

The world was cruel however.

Cruel enough for Emerson to go for his neck, feeling the ball-chain necklace and rip it off him, two tags of metal in between his fingers as he balled his fist.

The Roman struck first, swinging out his sword diagonally toward the man making the most noise: Masterson. The Texan threw himself back almost in that small alley, almost into the shop on the opposite end, avoiding the strike, however before Emerson could respond the sword went toward him.

He dove; dove for the Roman's stomach, felt his face plant against steel armor and unkindly the force of his body hitting the ground as Masterson scrambled up and out dashing toward the two men before the Roman, still holding his sword, could thrust it inward toward Emerson.

Masterson's boot had come to the blade first, punting it away, only for him to crush the man's wrist. The scream of pain was muted to Emerson as he dragged himself up on the Roman, clawing at his face, his helmet discarded, rolling off and tossed asides as Emerson did the only thing that was necessary. Civilians around them ran away, ignoring the trio as, for the first time in Emerson's life, he took a life.

When the dog tags came down on his face via fist, they didn't slice, and nothing was clean about it. Puncture was the better word as with strength befit a soldier, the fragility of a man was revealed in the way an eyeball bursts when forced through by metal. From then on it was layer by layer, breaking each in their own way. The structure of the face, of skin, then bone, then what remained inside of it. Emerson saw only red, felt only red, as Masterson held his friend by the shoulders to drag him off.

A Roman laid dead, head caved in, in that back alley in Tokyo, leaving nothing behind but his blood splatter on the two men that held him down and bashed his skull in.

Leaning down, Emerson could do nothing but pick up the only weapon he had: a sword, holding up to the light and seeing the inscriptions of a language he had never seen before. The sheen reflected his face, his eyes, and he had seen them cold.

To kill was a baptism, the holy water that of a coppery red. He was forever changed now.

This was how wars started: in the hearts of men.

* * *

There was a phrase for men like them. A motto, drilled into their very heart by their training. On some measure, maybe it had been some motivational bullshit that any group needed to pump their chest about; to feel special. It was a choice phrase however, coined on the beaches of a continent far away, in the middle of a battle. Here, more than any other time, that phrase should've been used. Irony had its way however as Emerson and Masterson found themselves on the tail of empty streets in the middle of Asia's busiest city, kicking in store fronts, doors, telling people in their best Japanese to-

_**"Fucking run! Go!"**_

**Rangers lead the way**. That was the phrase. So they, without argument, without second thought, would stay behind and make sure anyone who was in Ginza got out of it as they existed in the haze of the chaos.

They weren't heroes or distinct men of action. Just people who knew that if anyone made sense to die there today, it'd been them as they directed people out, down the streets, doing what Americans did best: be loud.

In the heart of Tokyo, there was always people, and they would never get enough people out, but they would try. It wasn't as if they intended to leave anyway.

The pops of gunfire in the distance, pistol cartridges no doubt from Tokyo police had combined with, plainly seen in the sky: fireworks. The sky hadn't been dark enough, but that's what they were, concussive pops going off in mid-air, aimed at the other fantastical displays up there. The roar of dragons ruled between the pops, and any news chopper or police chopper in the sky had been warded off, leaving the enemy with complete superiority in the air.

Japan's first responders hadn't been its military. It had been those with nothing more than popguns or roman candles, and that in itself was admirable.

All the two had had been the sword picked off of a man they killed: Ivory handles and a sharpened blade. It was certainly an eye-opening thing that had no right to exist as the two men had ran away from the staging point of the enemy, just below that stone gate. Slowly, ever so slowly, lines of battle had been drawn, and the wall, phalanxes were formed. The rumble of men marching in line like Hitler's Wehrmacht of old had returned to the world in the form of Legion.

They cut down any opposition in their way, swallowing those left behind whole: That opposition being women, and children, and tourists.

This is what they trained for: to save them, but they could not do that now without wasting their lives and it boiled their blood. It boiled their blood hot like lava and it only was magnified by the fact that someone was missing from them. One of their own. _Never leave a man behind_. It was a sacred oath and they were going against it now.

Five blocks down and that wall of legionnaires was seen. "Come on you fuckers! Come on!" Between the adrenaline, the blood loss, and the rage, Masterson pumped his chest as he stood in the middle of the street as men and women ran on either side of him, trying all his best to coax the enemy at him so he may strike them down with weapons he didn't have.

"Sergeant!" Emerson had been more coherent, warning his subordinate. It didn't take being a solider to know that what they were in the middle of wasn't a tactical ideal. Yet they were both more than just soldiers. More than just regular GIs. Emerson specially. West Point molded him, his youth grew him. He never picked a fight he couldn't win, and what they were facing right now it had been suicide.

Bodies of those in Tokyo had littered the streets: scorched, bled out, violent demises not fit for this world anymore. Maybe it would've been a truck, hijacked by some Islamic extremist that would've put the dead on these streets. Maybe it would've been a North Korean holdout, come to Tokyo with hidden AK, or, perhaps, a bomb from some right-wing Japanese extremist. But none of those things had been there that day.

There be dragons, and another cast its shadow above them all. Words fell out of both of their mouths to those around, diving for the underpass, but they didn't know if enough heard those words as the dragon dove itself and its mouth caught alight. The two men didn't see the fire as they threw themselves on concrete with what felt like a dozen other people, hands and arms covering their heads, but they felt the fire at their backsides as people screamed.

Combat footage from Syria and Libya spoke this story: of Russian Hinds or Loyalist MiGs throwing barrel bombs or rocket fire down on insurgents this close. What couldn't be felt however was how that fire, that hostility, removed the targets from the world so completely. The smell of burning flesh was a smell like no other, and as Emerson buried his head in the dark, all he knew was what it was like when men and women burned alive.

He opened his eyes, turned around, and saw another street paved black with ash and bodies.

Tokyo would be on fire. Not physically, asides from what fires did rage from storefronts caught in the range of these attacks. Tokyo was on fire with the rage of an Empire, come to attack it, to take it, in the name of something that had been so simple, the modern world would not understand.

Stumbling up he had taken his hands to Masterson's back as they stepped on people too afraid to raise their heads and affirm that they were alive and this had been a nightmare, he dragged him in a run, under the cover of that bridge. It was the only place they could go.

They tried their phones earlier, standing over the body of the Legionnaire, but Tokyo's cell towers had been overwhelmed and they were left alone in that world with nothing but a city under attack and civilians that needed to be drawn somewhere.

"Where are we even going?!" Masterson had ran, barking half way through it as his lungs were ragged from yelling. "We need to go back Kay! Tracy is back there!"

Tracy O'Neill. Squadmate. Father. Husband. Corporal.

Why they were in Ginza that day had seemed so, so distant from the darkness that shrouded all of them as the city streets filled with smoke from burnt tar or bone. They were there on Tracy's behalf. His _family_ had come to Tokyo to visit him and they had reached out to Emerson and Masterson to help organize it. For that, they were rewarded with this. _This._

"I know! _I KNOW!" _Emerson paused, stopping, for wherever they went in that urban sprawl it all felt like they were on treadmills, going nowhere. "We link up with some police. We ask for gear. We go back in for SAR."

"We need the rest of our people here, Kay." Masterson had been bleeding still, but it was no matter, not to him. Tracy was a part of his squad, the drive to go in there and get him out it tore at him like a claw. "We need to raise USFJ! Get the fucking crayon eaters out here! Abrams in Tokyo, F-35s above! **ANYTHING**!" Frantic, his voice cracking, leaning into his superior officer.

It was a punch that came to Masterson's face lovingly, only for his head to be held. "Listen to yourself!" Emerson ground into him, the implications of what he was asking too great for history. "US troops deployed in Tokyo!? One step at a time. We do what we can!"

_"God dammit."_

"Masterson?!"

"I get it I get it!"

Masterson wore his heart on his sleeve, figuratively and literally based on the blood. He decried the circumstances not only for himself though. He did it for Emerson too. Training had betrayed Emerson, his mouth ran dry and his lungs torn. One of his _men _was back there, in that goat rodeo, he was his responsibility and it meant everything. For him, he had to keep calm, keep measured, and hold what man he did have with him straight.

The attack didn't let up, the screech of the beast going for an attack far too close to comfort near. Without even looking, only running opposite of the sound, they ran in the shadow of the raised railway underpass of the metro.

It got ahead of them, the dragon, swooping beneath, stopping them in their tracks as if they were fleas. They would be stomped out like that, but the gun fire came first, the _pop pop pop_ of a .38 special revolver that glanced at the rider of that dragon. Sparks flew as his armor took rounds, wounding him, jerking him up and off as the dragon responded to the stimuli of the reins. The dragon flew off and away, leaving nothing but a rider.

Blood dripped from beneath his armored plates as he twisted around, looking for those who did the deed. Emerson and Masterson did so as well, finding nothing but a scared Tokyo metro cop, frantically swinging the cylinder of his revolver open.

The most vulnerable had been the better targets.

That's why the two Americans had seen a Roman charge a Japanese man who had never needed to fire a gun in his life in anger until today.

"Hey!" Another scream from Emerson, at the Roman, said man twisting his head around to him. Better him than anyone else. Masterson disagreed, taking Emerson's shoulder, but he shoved it off, walking forward.

He still had the sword from the last rider, drawn and ready. Although he had never used one in his life that hadn't been in ceremonial fashion, as long as that Roman concentrated on him…

Squaring up against Emerson, the knight never saw another Japanese man tackle him from behind, wrap his arms around his neck, and, in one motion as he brought the Roman to the ground, separate his head from his spine in a yank.

The Roman's body vibrated, not knowing it was dead as the gloss eye'd look in his eye was frozen, his form dropped to the floor unceremoniously.

That's when the killer rose. Older than them, black scruffy hair like any Japanese man in his thirties, a long face by some regard, lanky. Yet he was toned in a subtle way, hidden not by his cargo shorts and bright orange tee that Emerson couldn't place. He was a handsome man, he admitted to himself. Emerson wasn't into anime as much as some in his unit, and to think of someone who had worn such a proud proclamation of the media had just killed a man with his bare hands…

They were the same.

The two locked eyes. Same height, even. Same gait, same sharp eyes that knew better than to just stand there in the middle of that warzone. It was the hint of a ball chain necklace on the Japanese man's neck that hinted toward his true nature.

"Coins out, Cam."

The Americans had been first as Emerson led: Made in their name, for their name, two slices of metal. Emerson had forgotten that his own had been wrapped around his fist, never let go in the white-knuckle combat of the day, still bloody, a hint of skin and flesh wedged where it had cut. The Japanese drew his out, letting it lay on his chest:

What they couldn't read in the distance between him the man said in his higher voice, in Japanese. "My name is **Itami Youji**."

* * *

She was female 75th Ranger #138.

One of the first of the United State's special operations capable women, operating the same as the men that had, in years past, defined the occupation of war. Perhaps the type of American that had been born and raised since the end of the Cold War had changed. Maybe, as a whole, those who had grown up with the fall of the World Trade Center and the rise of an Islamic State had been edgier, had more bite as a whole, then those great generations that came behind them.

Maybe it didn't matter, and it simply had become time for the gender barrier to go down and for women, if they were able, 100%, to wage the Forever War. The War on Terror was without a gender barrier after all, and what that meant was that Lisa Bannon had been Platoon Sergeant of Lieutenant Kristian Emerson's Ranger Chalk.

It also currently meant she had been running on the tarmac of Yokota Air Base on the outskirts of Tokyo to the UH-60 Blackhawks with nearly twenty other men behind her: every single piece of their gear put on as they ran. That was the urgency, so much so some had only gone out with their plate carriers tossed on top of their skinnies and sweat pants. Whatever was going to happen was going to be a long day ahead, but all they worried about was getting out there in the first place.

It was an urgency brought upon two facts: An attack had come upon Tokyo that had made the JSDF spin up in the distance, and, more importantly to them, three of their own had been out there. The only reason why they had been running like this, on their own volition, was that the brass had been petrified, going through the motions of either this being a terrorist attack or if the Chinese had finally begun the war that everyone thought was coming.

The problem was that it hadn't been.

The news stations out of Tokyo had been cut off, communications sporadic, internet service cut down in all of the prefecture. The only news that came had come from black smoke that rose out of downtown Tokyo, and like the Native American signals of old it was a signal. Reports on the ground that had come in, fantastical in nature, but it all spoke to one understandable idea: there was a hostile army on ground.

The JSDF personnel at Yokota AFB had thought in horror that a terrorist attack had finally come to Japan. Though that had been wrong. It was a hunch felt only by the Americans there who knew better. This was too big to be an act of terror. This was an act of war, and whoever had been fighting it in the middle of Tokyo needed help that no one, American or Japanese, would give.

No one except a group of Rangers.

Bannon's helmet had been on a carabiner on her hip, what little hair she did have fluttering as she and that mass of men and women came running toward two choppers, spinning up, unease in their eyes.

"We're putting our ass out on the line for this, Sergeant." One of the pilot's spoke, her New York-drawl aggressive, but not unwarranted. These orders came from no one.

The first time anyone would hear Bannon speak, they would either check their ears or be grounded. For her voice was that of death itself: like nails on a chalkboard, or a man dragged on concrete, flesh grinding. Her voice was raspy and full of air, as if she had been a smoker all of her life. It grated against her words and left her unkind to listen to.

"You have your orders."

She needed to be out there. She needed to be, regardless of orders. That was what she owed the team she was a part of. That's what she owed to Emerson and Masterson if she was worth a damn as a platoon sergeant. It's what she owed Masterson alone if she was worth anything to herself.

"News to me." The pilot responded as she and the crew loaded in, the men and women that came with Bannon splitting off and entering, half with one chopper, half with another.

Bannon had only rolled her head, helmet on, looking toward that distant smoke and the grey clouds that came. It beckoned to her, for it was battle. She glanced her sunken eyes at the pilot, and that, by itself, was a threat as she sat over the side of the Black Hawk's compartment, throwing, last Ranger in, one hand up and twirling her index finger in a circle.

It was time. The Black Hawks had begun their rise up, only to meet the distant pitter patter of rain droplets that had appeared out of nowhere. It was if the smoke arising from Tokyo beckoned a storm.

There was a man in that chopper, another Ranger, far older than he should've been for his age. Some said he had been the oldest operations capable Ranger in the whole 75th. Some said he had been there in Abbottabad when Bin Laden was shot and killed. He was never at liberty to confirm anything but he had been a Ranger for nearly two decades in a profession where people died young.

He was a link to the past. Before the age of warfighters manifested in the only way they could, born beneath a War on Terror.

"Ramirez?" A middle-aged man looked up from his seat, hands around his M1014 shotgun slackening. He was a cop in San Diego, and all that it meant. Even before he had been a Ranger he served the so called public good and come out worse for wear. He knew war. He knew war worse than all. "You have Weapons."

Weapons Squad that is, the heavy hitters, the autogunner and indirect fire people with handheld mortars and AP. He could handle.

Everything about this man read the tale of a war that the world had forgotten how to fight, and took out on him personally. His gear, his gun, the haunted look in his eyes as he was being carried to another battlefield. He was there when Kabul fell, and the American forces covered an evacuation that echoed the Fall of Saigon but far bloodier, far much more a failure. He was there when North Korea made its final play: when the nuclear inspectors came and were murdered. The sky had fallen on Seoul that day, but in response, Hell had come to Pyongyang.

He knew the feeling of what it meant to _be there_. So too he would be at the Battle of Ginza he felt in his bones.

He nodded at Bannon, affirming. She would lead the rest.

Not one man or woman wavered out as, in the distance, the JSDF sirens went off, wailing into the crying sky. The choppers finally lifted off the deck, taking flight, their destination clear, and yet broad. "We insert at the American Embassy, ascertain the situation, and then we move as needed. We copy _**Hitman?!**_"

Hitman. That was the name of their unit. Officially they were a part of Delta Company, 4th Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment. But they were alone now, here: All they had was what they were called over the radio.

_**"Hooah!"**_

* * *

Older than him, but not much. That was the first impression Emerson had of Itami Youji. He recognized the accent, he was a local of Tokyo in the same way Emerson's English outed him as a local of New York City. Black, spiky hair sat atop a tall face, the man built, his veins shown, regret in his eyes as he tried to push the sight of a dead man out of his eyes.

His dog tags came out as well, and, without saying, who he had been was revealed. He was part of the Japanese Self-Defense Force. The _Jietai. _There was a serious look written on his face, his teeth barred, panting breaths past it. Snapping a man's neck in two had been so unlike the casualness he had been dressed up in. No one ever killed on purpose in cargo shorts, Emerson thought shrewdly.

"You okay?" Emerson asked in English. Itami nodded, bending down, only picking up the sword that the rider had as the blood from gunshots pooled. He was still in shock, the screams in his head dulled out, the feeling of a head detaching from the spinal cord echoing within him.

"I'll be fine." He said, resolutely, shaking his head as if ridding himself of any doubts in his mind. He needed to kill that man. "Are you okay?" He seemed more concerned with Masterson, the man dripping in his own blood down one arm.

He grinned, forcing a smile as that side of his body twitched. As much as he tried to feign an arm that had gone asleep, the wince of pain still hit him as he spoke back. "Ain't nothing. Looks worse than it is partner."

There was a term that had been something of a catchphrase in Emerson's family. They were born in the hard knock Brooklyn, in the Marcy Projects. He had a mother and a father; a brother too. Sharing a small apartment in a neighborhood taken by the gentrification of an America at a post-modern crossroads. "In the wrong place, at the wrong time." Had been the default bellyache for his family, shared between them as rent went up, food went down, and the hardships of life came and went.

It was a phrase he wanted to utter now and all that it meant with Romans rolling down Tokyo streets, killing all.

The running of the saved police officer had distracted them all, the man finally getting his .38 shells in. His radio was buzzing, but traffic was too hot to discern much of anything. "Th-thanks!" He managed to breath out, Itami putting a hand on the younger man's shoulder. He was shellshocked, if nothing else, death staring him in the face.

"What's going on here? Where are the civilians going?" Itami asked, and in that, Emerson had thought something of the man. If he had been JSDF, then perhaps he could've been a…

The police officer doubled over on his knees and Emerson had the echo of a thought: to ask for his gun. He didn't though, it wasn't right as he breathed out.

"We have no idea. The radio is just crazy right now and we lost all communications with the precinct."

Survivors had slowly started accruing around the men, quiet, not knowing what to do. As if they had been personally responsible for the constriction in his throat Emerson felt their need of him surround him. Men, women, children. The Japanese come to him and Itami because they stood tall and seemed like they knew what they were doing.

Emerson didn't, but he knew there had to be a place, an evacuation point, that was within range. It would've been suicide to trust people in a mob to simply scatter like this.

In his eyes Itami had a ghost of a vision, an idea, that was on the tip of his lips. He looked to the north-west, and then back to the direction of Ginza. These enemies had been that of before the Middle Ages, of Rome itself.

There was only one place in all of Tokyo that had known what that was like. He would've been embarrassed to admit how he thought of it, but there was no ceremony to stand on: not with a dead man at their feet and the innocent burned alive around them.

Once, long ago, Tokyo had burned, and despite it all a castle had survived.

"_Kokyo." _Was all that had been on Itami's lips. Translated into English, it made sense to any who knew of its history.

"What?! You can't expect-"

Itami saw right through the lack of plan. At least he had one. "The _Palace _is the only place to be guarded enough to save these people." The Imperial Palace, the throne of an Emperor. Itami explained it hard and fast. "It is the only place built to withstand this kind of warfare."

A warfare outdated for nearly five centuries, but alas, it was alive and well now.

"It's a staging point. From there, we can organize." Emerson affirmed readily. It was an idea, and Masterson had no protest. He just wanted to fight. They all just wanted to fight.

They had their duty though.

"Can you call it in?" Itami had asked calmly, pointing at the police officer's radio before turning over to Emerson and Masterson, the two nodding. That was when the yelling started, at the top of their lungs, telling people that there was only one way out of here, and it had been at the seat of power of all of Japan.

People would remember them then: the Texan, the black man, and the older Japanese otaku yelling their lungs out on top of cars telling people where to go.

Their yells, their voices, screamed at them for their lives. Such volume could not have gone unnoticed for long as a lone rider appeared from around the corner, a block down, people keeping a wide berth from him.

A horseman. A pike at his side and his steed ready to roar.

Emerson knew what to do immediately, dropping down from the roof of the car he had perched on, sword in hand. "Cam, go."

"What?" The Texan asked as if the man was crazy.

"Go with the cop, take these people to the Palace. I'll see you there."

He was mad, Masterson decided, to him at least. He had already left one man behind today, but damned it all if he left his CO. "But-"

"That's an order, sergeant."

Itami raised his eyebrows in a side glance at the African-American man. It had been the first time he'd seen one in person, and, because of it, he stood out in this crowd of survivors, pushing past him to safety. "You're an officer?" He asked.

Emerson nodded. "Second Lieutenant… you?"

"First Lieutenant." He blinked at Emerson, answering. But then a smirk came from the side of his mouth. "You have the command?"

Emerson breathed out a raspy breath in aggravation. "Look around you, you think anyone's in command?"

Itami shook his head back. "I just wanted to go to the convention today."

_Really? _"That what you're thinking of now?" Emerson held his sword closer to himself.

"Maybe."

Masterson wasn't usually how he was now: skittish, weighed down. He was a carefree man, a good man, by any pretense of the word. Grown up in a Texas, risen by his family's charity, but he by the people who never received it, he knew empathy beyond words. The smile and his bombastic personality, swept away by war, by the fact one of his men and his family was missing in action.

"Cam." Emerson turned around one last time as the horse rider stared them down down the street. "Go."

"Kay." He said in concern to his officer. They were friends, and Emerson had proven himself more than just some plucky West Point graduate to Masterson. If he hadn't proven himself before, he had proven himself now. This was what Rangers did.

The police officer with them had put a hand on Masterson's bloodied shoulder, urging him to go, but he shook it off. Before the man could open his mouth Emerson had his response.

"I'll be back. Besides," Emerson turned back around to face down the rider, "Bannon would give me hell if something happened to you."

That brought him down from the rage he had. Realization that he himself was a person, not an arbitrator of justice. "God dammit. _**Fine!" **_To think himself an executor, it was a trap that had been drilled into his head, fallen too easily through.

Storming off, doing his job, the crowds drew to him and the police officer as he led the way to safety, leaving behind two soldiers from two different armies.

"Soldiers, huh?"

"Same as you."

Itami shook his head again. "Never thought myself as one."

"Yet here we are?" Emerson said with as much seriousness as he could gather. The horse and its rider stayed at the other end of the block, staring them down as the horse grinded its hoofs against unfamiliar ground. "Why you out here today anyway man?"

"There was a convention today, in Ginza." He said slowly, in English. Emerson didn't see the need, responding in a Japanese that not many expected out of a man like him.

Itami widened his eyes in surprise when Emerson spoke his language. "Not going to be one now, I think."

"I wanted to pick some things up there…" Was that remorse on his tongue? Emerson couldn't believe it. But people needed their priorities in war, in combat. If he needed a reason Emerson let him have it.

"I think we have our priorities." Itami didn't seem convinced, but small-talk was over, the rider circling his horse, building momentum as the street was cleared. He was a scout no doubt, here to capitalize on being alone with people who dared stand in his way. The reds and silvers of his armor shone beneath metropolitan lighting. "Call me Kay, by the way. Like the letter."

"_Hai." _Itami said, the two men wisely spreading apart, putting the lane between them as the rider seemed ready.

When the horse began its charge in a gallop, the two men sucked in the breaths in their lungs as Emerson raised his sword into the air, only to haul it behind his back and, in one lunge as the horse was halfway to them: threw it at it.

In the shadow of his helmet the Roman seemed surprised, veering his horse off as the sword flew at him, stealing him of his momentum as Itami charged, seeing the slightly ajar door of the car closest to the horse and its rider. "Hey! Come at me!" He dared them, and they seemed to understand.

So they began again the brisk charge, running straight at Itami as he hugged the edge of the sedan, sliding his fingers between the gap of the ajar door, waiting, just waiting for the final few yards to do what he intended to do: staring death in the face as he bore his teeth and prayed to God as, with all his might, he made his play.

The car door flew open, the horse crashing right into it in an explosion of glass. The horse crippled over it, down onto the ground in a fleshy crash, throwing its rider off of it in a tangled mess, fit with metal, his pike breaking as he fell onto it.

His arm had been bent behind him, his horse scampering away leaving him at the mercy, groaning in pain, of two men above him with weapons of his world.

A black man, and a man from the East. So much unlike him.

He spat a swear in his tongue toward them, damning their gods.

All he got was the boot in the face as the two ran off and away, toward an Imperial Palace.

* * *

For any reason, any reason at all, Emerson was needed there, it had been to say what Itami had been shouting at the huddled masses congregating around the Imperial Palace in English if it was needed.

They would've been run down on the run to the Imperial Palace, but the fire department had found them first, a truck waved down by them and escorting them to the Palace on its back. They had left shortly after, its siren blaring.

"What the hell are you doing?!" Itami asked the firefighters, a grim look in their eyes.

"Someone's gotta fight back!" They answered all in the same way. The great water cannons meant for fires that threatened Tokyo lives had a purpose then and there. "If we can't spray the hell out of them, we can at least run them over!" The desperation in their voices had tore at Emerson's very being. He should've been out there with them. There was someone he was responsible for, out there.

Pure chaos manifested in every aspect of Tokyo: even the sky above as grey storm clouds formed, having creeped upon this day of days. The sky was on fire, fireworks and flares shot up by anyone who was willing to put up a fight against the dragons. Anti-air culminating in star bursts and emergency tools, and it was the best Tokyo could do.

Versus ballistas and battalions, there was no way anyone fighting back without a gun could've done anything. Even if they had a car to run down the hordes, you could only run over so many bodies.

The grey overcast boded nothing but disaster as Tokyo smoked, ground zero: Ginza.

Itami had his plan, and he begged a police kiosk in the middle of the chaos. Not even on their worst days had anything been like this. In the distance: the sound of metal screeching. Those dragons and their riders had been tearing down the cellular and radio towers on top of the buildings. Why they had been doing that couldn't be known other than just to cause more destruction, but it meant hell for communications.

Around the block, police cars had formed a barrier where they could. Not enough police officers on site to form a proper barricade and perimeter, but it was something.

Emerson recounted that, at one point, the Japanese police had only accounted for five rounds fired in the line of duty in a year.

What was happening today, as the report of meager police revolvers in the distance went off, this year would be an outlier. It would be an outlier in every sense.

"Do you understand what you're asking?!" The police officer in the guard booth had yelled back at Itami. "We already had to drag one of you idiots out!"

Said idiot had been on the steps of that booth, an onsite paramedic shrewdly making sure his wound had been dealt with.

Masterson had been biting down on the remains of his shirt as the medic dug their hands into his wound, taking out arrow heads as a staple gun was shot into him instead, closing the wound ungracefully, but sufficiently.

Itami's fist banged against the glass window of the booth, talking through it. "We have to hunker down here! If we try to coordinate a mass evacuation on our streets?! People will be trampled! It'll be a massacre with those-" He pointed out at the shapes of dragons. "Out there!"

Emerson had taken the moment to kneel by Masterson as the medic finished up with him, running off to deal with other injuries that had come about to gather just outside the Imperial Palace. Word had gotten around and the crowds and crowds of civilians had started showing up, straining everyone there.

"You good Ranger?"

Masterson let a strained laugh come out of his throat. "Fuck if it matters."

Emerson could only shake his head in jest, trying to level with one of his team leads, offering a hand to drag him up, which he had taken. His own blood had been dried on his palms, Masterson stripped down to his tank top. He had been a career Ranger now, and his body told the story of warfighters. The image of an American man fed with steak and nurtured with whole milk. Yet even that could be taken down by a simple arrow, hitting it in his shoulder, his shirt turned into a wrap over it.

Itami and the police man's argument rose and rose even as the crowd clamored for action, the sound of battle coming ever and ever closer. It was an argument that would've gone too long had it not been the ring of a telephone directly to that booth.

It was the booth that dictated the doors to the great walls of the Imperial Palace to open, to let the huddled masses in.

"What do you-?!" The police officer that answered the phone had stopped is mouth almost immediately, biting his tongue as the unknowable voice on the other end told him to open the gates. "Your Majesty!"

The three soldiers snapped their heads to the booth and the phone. It couldn't have been?

The police officer had widened eyes as he looked to his compatriots, signaling for the doors to be opened and preparing for the crowd that would come rushing in. Hundreds of people, huddled together, lost and confused. Itami had jumped up, grabbing the roof of the police booth and finding himself on top of it as he yelled out and the great ancient doors of the Imperial Palace were opened. He saw out at the sea of people and thanked his stars that this was what he decided to do.

A hand had reached up below him. It was Emerson. Grabbing it he had hoisted the American up, their idea understood.

The two had yelled out in their voices, one in English, the other in Japanese, beckoning people forward into safety as they became beacons above chaos that seemed to be ever so encroaching like a tide. Directions, commands, it came naturally to the two as the people of Tokyo looked to them and listened sent on their way away from the war that was brewing blocks down. A war beat back only by police with handguns that petered out. At the very end of the waves of civilians had been the police themselves: running.

The gardens and the Imperial Palace had been in itself cordoned off by its very nature: almost an island in Tokyo's urban sea. The only way over a variety of chokepoints over water. The genius of Itami's decision made sense. Primeval warfare fought by primeval means. The police had come running by entire brigades: the riot police that had been deployed in such a hurry that even they hadn't been able to form barricades to stop what had been inevitable:

Through the deployed tear gas, the haze of Tokyo of fire and smoke, rose the flags of purple and gold: of a dragon and swords. Legions themselves come marching, their boots one unified beat as they appeared within distance of the palace.

A wall of shields, made of man, behind them: catapults and ballistae.

Itami looked down: a young girl had tripped, at risk of being trampled a few feet away as the riot police and other first responders rushed to the defensive lines formed around the Palace. His feet flew as he jumped off the booth, toward her.

A child, no more than six perhaps. Her blue dress dirtied and ruined from the day. She was alone, hands around her ears as the sounds of war beat ever closer. Itami had basically skid to right in front of her, taking her sides and picking her up. "Hey, hey, come on. I'll get ya safe."

The girl could hardly say anything as the weight of an unknowable pain was within her eyes, words unable to be formed in her mouth. What had she seen that day? Itami had wondered.

Too much.

He had rushed back to the police booth, the medics present transitioning from civilians to the first responders who had tried, at all, to mount a defense further into Ginza. What they had gotten had been arrows and blunt force injuries, stabs and burns. An officer, still standing, had seen Itami with the girl, the two locked eyes as they met half way before kneeling and laying down casualties; walking wounded who refused to lay down their arms.

"Your daughter?" The police officer asked, Itami shook his head, dragging his dog tags out again.

"Get her safe. Please." The police officer nodded, taking her off and away and into the palace. How many children like her had been out there? Itami had damned himself for thinking that thought as he looked back to the police booth and the man standing on it.

Emerson looked out at the legions, within firing range by his account, but he hadn't a weapon worth a damn to do anything. The last stragglers of civilians passing by. Any of those left behind were swallowed by these legions.

If it wasn't the time then, it was the time now, the police cruisers and trucks that had been able to get on site thrown open, shotguns and submachine guns starting to go out and passed around to those who were able to still operate.

Where was the JSDF? Emerson had looked at those grey skies. Strange, it had been such a clear day earlier.

Things change though. Today would forever be a testament to that as he caught Masterson hungrily looking at a police cruiser's trunk.

"Lieutenant!" Itami heard his rank called from Emerson, he looking up as the man jumped down. "We can do no good here. We're moving out."

Itami looked at him as if mad. "What?!" He pointed at the plainly seen legions, waiting, biding their time, brewing fear as officers inside of the castle had forced civilians away and not to look.

"We'll find a hole, a flank, push behind them." Masterson answered, guessing Emerson's game plan. "Just give us guns and-"

"What are you? Marines? Army? Air Force? If you're just regular infantry, I can't possibly let you-" Emerson told him what they were. A seriousness on his face that was compounded by the color of his skin to Itami. He was serious. Far more serious than he had ever seen a man that day. What they were, they were qualified. "Why though?"

A SAT truck, Japan's SWAT team, had rolled up from behind. Not a full crew, but their weapons could be spread around as officers dragged wounded back and set up a firing line across the waters and bridges.

"One of my men is back there, at that comicbook convention or whatever today." More than that. Emerson and Masteron knew oh so much more than that. His sneakers twisted on the ground as if raring to go. He didn't want to ask permission of Itami, but something inside of him, his dumb West Point-educated mannerisms made him want to clear it with another officer. He knew it was insane, but today was insanity. "**We have to go back**."

Masterson had already been motioning toward the SAT truck as Itami grinded his teeth, looking at the rest of the police officers take position. No one there had been ranking, and they needed a military presence when the JSDF did get there. He couldn't leave, and he couldn't be responsible for these two Americans.

"Where have you been?" He asked once, leading the two to the SAT truck as one of their officers rose an eyebrow at them.

Emerson had blinked as he remembered where he had fought war before and how different it was from today: "Yemen, Iraq, Syria."

"Baghdad, Pyongyang, and Juarez partner." Masterson answered himself. "Don't you doubt that."

Stories of American Special Forces abroad filled his head. America's invisible hand, crushing those for reasons beyond his understanding. "I don't."

The trio had arrived to the back of the truck, the armory chief in his casual clothes, obviously not expecting to be called out today, had yelled at them as if they were expecting weapons as several other officers shuffled through weapons and gear. "Who the hell are-?!"

Itami rose his hand.

"They're good. They're American." The Japanese police man had looked to Itami, and then back to Emerson and Masterson, their eyebrows raised. "They're military."

Masterson had twitched. "**Special forces**, you son of a bitch."

**Rangers** lead the way.

Light infantry, airborne special operations force. The American forces that came in to extract the NAVY Seals that killed Bin Laden had been of the same blood as those who had taken Point Du Hoc over Omaha and Utah Beach during the D-Day Landings, nearly a hundred years ago. Emerson and Masterson shared that blood. From Normandy, to Basra, to Nigeria, that experience, that weight, was with the two men now.

The officer seemed shocked, and Itami had still been recovering from the reveal. "**75****th**** Rangers. SOF.**" Emerson stepped forward, clarifying, between the Police Chief and Itami. "Just give us your kits and we'll be out of your hair. We'll radio forward positions and give the Cobras something to think about. _**Please." **_Emerson looked up, _if the Cobras got up_, he thought.

"We're responsible for whatever you do with these." The Chief bit back. "We can't let you go."

"One of my men is out there. What would you do for yours?" Pleading. It was in Emerson's voice as all at once, Itami placed his hand on the Chief's shoulder. Of all the battles that needed to be fought that day, this one was not worth it.

With one flick of the hand two kits were taken from the tactical racks. Black plate carriers with the Japanese word for POLICE had been across it. It barely hid the fact that they had nothing more than t-shirts and shorts on. Masterson himself had been rucking it with socks and sandals. But it was okay, the world over Special Operators like them had shown up on the scene like this, it didn't feel right, but it was how history made them out to be.

The guns came out, and it was time to get busy.

Police as they were, they were given police guns. MP5s, 9mm submachine guns.

"How much ammo?" One of the police had asked.

"As much as you can." Emerson begged with his eyes. They were going out there to save a man, but to do that, they would have to fell an army. Even nine-millimeter could break what these Romans were wearing.

He heard Masterson trying to get one of the police officer's attentions, pointing into the back of the paddy wagon. "Hey, that one. Just give me that one."

What emerged from locker had been nothing less than imported American steel. Surplus, surely, given to Japan at some point during the Cold War and then promptly sent downward into the more civilian occupation of police work, but it had been an American weapon.

The name of Ithaca, which this weapon bore, was familiar to Emerson as a New York native.

It was a shotgun, a belt full of red shells handed over. "This buckshot or rubber?"

"Buckshot." The police officer handing it off to him replied.

He was impressed. "Must be a special occasion."

Emerson had been otherwise busy rocking in the mag of his MP5 in, sending the bolt back to chamber the round before slamming the bolt forward.

Just a basic bitch MP5, something Masterson had been more than willing to point out. "Pistol caliber against fucking suits of armor? Is that gonna cut it?"

"It'll have to." Two headsets had been tossed their way, two police officer hurriedly wiring them down to radios mounted on their kits. "What channel we on right now?"

"It'll send it back to station once we get comms back up hopefully." Emerson affirmed, getting used to the sights on this gun. He was used more to his AR. What he would do for any of his gear right now, well, it'd be ironic. He would kill a man for it. He'd fought worse off. He'd fought in his damn skinnies when the mortars came in his little patrol base in Iraq. He'd fought worse when the war began anew, fed by a Russia that didn't exist anymore. The world had changed. He had changed, and Ginza, whoever came to it to conquer, would know it true.

"Ain't First Division supposed to be out here?" Masterson asked Emerson hurriedly, but Itami shook his head.

"They're still partly in Korea, the rest are still up North, cleaning the **Zone**." A clue. Itami came from the 1st Division: the JSDF regiment in charge of Tokyo's defense. Going to North Korea had been pertinent to that when the DMZ came down and Korean Reunification came under a hail of artillery. The war that the JSDF first went into wasn't one on their own soil or sea, but rather in a peninsula across the water. What it meant was more than just Pacific peace, it meant that Japan had gone to war for the first time since the war that defined a new modern era, one that now clashed with Romans themselves.

What had happened those past few months in Fukushima? Also unthinkable, drawing the best of the JSDF off and away to save their country.

The Beast called for them. It called for Kay Emerson and Cam Masterson in the sound of screaming and the impact of ancient munitions against the modern world. It called for them in the roar of beasts; called for them as men of action thirsted for. Out there, the helpless needed help, the saviors needed saving. Soldiers needed to fight.

What it felt like to want to fight an entire war was put upon their shoulders as if slipped on by the Japanese police, and it made them boil.

"Cam, we ready?!"

**"Hooah!"**

One of their own was out there with his family, and if anything happened to them, they would never forgive themselves.

"You shouldn't go out there." Spoken in English, Itami Youji regarded them, away from the defenses as they funneled into the Palace. The attention Itami gave to those masses he signaled into the Palace was put on them now, squarely on Emerson. It was a look of worry from an older man.

Emerson gave him a look back, and it pleaded with him to understand. To understand the man who was born in a city who had fallen victim to a day, long ago, that defined modern history. He was a New Yorker, born and raised, and what that meant was in his soul he inherited the agony of a people who knew loss. Once, what felt like a century ago, two towers stood over New York.

Emerson had finally understood now what that day felt like as an adult.

What remained now was the America that emerged from its ashes.

"We have to." Emerson explained. "We have to."

"I can't promise you support." Itami warned.

Emerson didn't care. He knew exactly what he was getting himself into. "Take care of these people, and I'll take care of my own. _I'll see you on the other side, _Lieutenant Itami."

Before Itami could respond the two Americans took off, together, going the opposite flow of retreating first responders and stragglers. When they realized they were going to fight, they opened up like the Red Sea before Moses, clearing their way to war.

Itami had watched them cross a bridge and cut off and away into an alleyway, too fast for those massive legions to account for them. With that, he figured he'd be better off inside, even as that same Chief offered him a gun. He shook his head as he ran inside, hoping to find someone with comms to division headquarters.

There hadn't been a quiet moment that day, even coming to the safety of the palace as it was opened up, the worried and the angry, the confused and the panicked, all rising up to a crescendo that seemed to only go higher until those that saw him first started a hush that spready like a virus.

One by one, onlookers turned upward.

In the palace, on the balcony to meet an Empire, an Emperor had appeared over the panicked and worried crowds. He had been the first Emperor of Japan born after the Second World War. He did not know what it was like for American B-29s to lay waste to Tokyo; he did not know what a Japan under attack looked like. Not until today of course, not until he saw his capital city raise in smoke and fire around him as modern warfare manifested at his doorstep. His bodyguards had been frantic, just short of throwing him under his arms. He was an older man now, in the ten years since he had inherited the Chrysanthemum Throne, but today, more than ever, and for Japan as whole, he had been aged a century.

He stood at the railing of his palace courtyard, over the crowds as they noticed he was there.

"Your Majesty, please, we need to get you somewhere safe." One of his guards pressed him.

Emperor Naruhito would not be pressed, one hand of his staying on the railing, looking out into Tokyo beyond the walls of an Imperial Palace that had been built for this type of warfare. History repeated in abstractions and absurdities, and here, as a modern man representing the Japanese people, he would stand before, in the distance, the Gate and remind Japan, let the people who dare come to his country know, that he was a descendent of **God**.

Silence took the palace, Itami Youji looking to his Emperor same as those hundreds of other people. He had thought little of what it meant to be Japanese in his life. He was more concerned with being himself in the end, however he had ended up in the JSDF regardless. He joined to serve himself, to live the life he wanted to live, but he was not blind. He was a thirty-year-old man outside of the audience-age of what he partook in, but what that meant was that he lived a life and knew what value was. He had a duty. He had honor.

In the distance all his blessings were with the two Americans who he had found that day and hoped, just hoped, that they would shepherd more to him.

Itami Youji became an icon of the Battle of Ginza, taking to atop a police booth and directing the innocent into the Imperial Palace, into safety. But he would share that distinction, of being a hero, with two Americans. His fate was tied forever then now with them and all that it meant.

In the Emperor's eye, there was a war coming. A war that Japan had to fight. For the righteousness of his people, just justice, for freedom against a tyranny that it had not felt since- since…

Itami knew what he had to do then and there. No excuses, no running away. People needed him, and it was a promise made to himself since he was a young man, since he saw what cruelties of life gave people, to save all he could.

Two American Black Hawks buzzed over the Imperial Palace and the cherry blossoms of the Imperial Garden followed them into the grey sky.

* * *

"This is Super 2-1 to Embassy Guard. Anyone on this net?"

There be dragons. They had floated and flown around Tokyo as if it had been a feeding ground, and for many, it had been, pieces of people being collected from the streets and left atop buildings. That's what had taken the Bannon's Black Hawks so long, skirting the ground and staying out of range of beasts that had, when they were first seen, made them doubt the reality they were in. Whatever the enemy though, the war had been real:

Dead in the streets, weapons of war brought to bear and the troops of a nation out of time.

"Super 2-1 to any units on this net, please respond."

The US Embassy had been a brisk ten-minute drive away from Ginza, well within this enemy's line of battle, and, as far as any of their responsibilities went, it lied with them before they went into Ginza to face whatever would come.

In the distance, the USS Fallujah had been roaring to life. The escort carrier had been in port of Tokyo Bay, delivering its MEU onto mainland Japan for training exercises. What it would do, the Rangers thought, they couldn't even begin to imagine: Air support, directly over Tokyo.

And just barely heard over the roar of a city at war, had been the turbofans of American jets, spinning up.

The American military had always been quick on the draw, and here, there was a set of plans in place for an attack on Tokyo, a contingency. It wasn't an untruth that the Rangers deployed were in charge of Embassy evacuations, but the reason why Bannon came out here had been personal, nonetheless.

She tightened her throat mic as she spoke into it, transmitting to the team. "Game plan is my team with me to clear the diplomatic residences, Ramirez, hit the Embassy itself and ascertain the situation. We need to see if the Marines on deck have it on lock."

Bannon had been to war before: Afghanistan. Sipping tea with the Taliban, a SCAR-L in her hand, a hijab loosely over her head. Afghanistan nowadays had been a different beast. America preferred its dictators to extremists, and for that, history turned out that way. The last choice that had to be made was the one that consolidated the Taliban. The one where America did its interest for the sake of an Afghanistan without buried Americans.

Deals with the Devil, and America as a whole was party to it. Bannon had far and away removed herself from it. She had to. Not after what she had seen become of Afghanistan in her time there. To be complicit in those type of wrongs would be to give the Taliban the reasoning behind their eternal war. Righteous as they were, Bannon could do nothing there but let history decide where she was to be.

It put her, deployments and deployments after Afghanistan, a few blocks down from the US Embassy.

"We can't go no further Ranger!" Bannon's pilot yelled back as the claustrophobic mass of Tokyo's buildings surrounded them. "Sky's too hot!"

Roars of beasts echoed between glass and steel, and the pilot's point was made as she nodded, tying her mask over her face. "Put us down close then."

"Aight! One minute!"

_ "One minute!"_

_ "One minute!"_

The signal that insertion was one minute out rang out through the two choppers from the Rangers. Some had been late on the draw though, looking down, seeing horses and Romans in the street. The dead littered, the hallmarks of an ancient battlefield highlighted the roads of Tokyo as streams of red drained into sewer grates. They couldn't believe what they were seeing.

Neither could those invaders on the ground, looking up and seeing beasts of steel, thumping the wind itself in such a way that seemed unreal.

Still, maybe the Rangers could've understood better. If a hundred years ago, they could've told Patton or MacArthur that American troops could be deployed on the wings of angels it seemed, anywhere in the world within 24 hours, they too would've been flabbergasted.

"Watch for civilians!" Ramirez had yelled over the net knowingly. "We find any of them, make sure they get behind us before we're engaged!"

The rooftops of downtown Tokyo became eye-level with the Rangers as the shadow of buildings took over the choppers, their reflections painted by modern marvels that the Romans, in their idle moments, saw and were beholden to.

What kind of people had been able to build such towers of glass and steel?

Where had they gone in their conquest?

The Black Hawks had two gunners on their armaments, but even with targets below, they wouldn't open fire. Any who dared might've fired the first shots in a war beyond their understanding.

The crew chiefs in the Black Hawks had thrown their legs over the side as he felt the lurch of the Black Hawk, a telltale sign that it was stopping, several dozen feet over the roads. "Your stop!" The crew chief in Bannon's chopper notified her, and she nodded, throwing a thumbs up.

"Loke!" Bannon called for their team point woman: the young Pakistani-American answering as she had adjusted the sling to her Mk18 one last time. The ropes from the two Black Hawks were sent down, spiraling to the empty street below. Goggles on, helmet tight, this was a fast rope she never thought would happen in her life.

The window panes and the loose debris of urban Tokyo ebbed and flowed as the choppers sat above the seat, waiting for those inside of them to disembark.

"On your go Ranger!" The crew chief had patted Loke's back as he held his head out the window, looking for any signs of the hostiles that came today.

Sucking in a breath, the young woman grabbed the thick rope out of the chopper with her gloved hands, sliding down to a concrete jungle.

What the public and security cameras of Tokyo caught that day would've filled an archive of its own, but what had been seen that day a few blocks down from the US Embassy in Tokyo had been the first insertion of US military troops in a war that would define Japan for the rest of time. They landed like ghosts, just as Americans had the world over for the last two decades, in a song and dance that could not have conceivably been played in Tokyo. Seeing was believing though, and a Ranger chalk had touched down in Tokyo as Empire raged.

No sooner than they had arrived, the choppers had flown off to be on station for embassy extractions, and the Rangers themselves disappeared down the road into the chaos of Ginza.

* * *

"You okay LT?" They had sprinted back the way they came, the crowds of civilians thinning out to the nothingness they left behind. Masterson asked Emerson in care, the silence that somehow came upon them giving them for the first time in the last hour time to think.

No. Kristian Emerson was not okay. It's why Masterson had asked in the first place.

Emerson was a serious man, most of the time. He was young, but life hadn't dealt him a good hand. No one who ended up in the Rangers, perhaps, had a good hand. The altruism of patriotism via service hadn't survived, that long. He was just like any other West Point grad in a way, Masterson had pegged, but there was a reservedness that betrayed any incompetence that most fresh officers had. The weight on his back, running back into Tokyo, hadn't just been ammo.

"If we don't get to Tracy soon, we're gonna lose him in this mess."

They stacked up by an alleyway, peering down the block at the vague blur of men. Ogres, beasts, half-men and half-monsters forming battle lines as even more distantly they could see them penetrate the buildings, taking themselves in there and throwing whatever hadn't been theirs out. Desks, chairs, people. The flutter of office papers floated in the air.

"Jesus Christ." For the first time today it seemed Emerson had totally been shocked, the sound of bodies hitting pavement making even him wince. In the urban corridors, screams echoed along with the breaking of bone, the march of steel boots.

He patted down his kit one time. Six mags in reserve, one in the gun. No pistol hidden somewhere, but tear gas and flashbangs hooked readily available. 9mm. Parabellum. In Latin it was an ironic name: If you wanted peace, prepare for war.

Ducking out of the alleyway, looking at the formations, to think of this of nothing less than war would've been lethal.

"We cut through the buildings and alleyways, and get into Ginza. These-" Emerson patted his gun, "Are fighting guns, not attacking. Not our place to."

Screams and silence, the sound of the city had turned to that. Periods of utter stillness that Tokyo had long forgotten, only replaced at intervals by crashes of chaos and then screaming. People were being put to death.

Masterson felt for so much as a man, his labored breathing residing, only after his first banged against the wall. "Hitman should be deployed to the American Embassy."

"I know." Emerson said silently, see a few heads a few blocks down move toward them from that Roman legion. "Cut around and across." He talked half with his hands as Masterson took point, praying to God that no one else remained back here.

"Push forward, establish a forward rally point. It'll be better if they come to us. Preferably with a flat top roof." Masterson added.

To their back, the sound of gunfire rattled off. The two men had jerked toward it. They knew that pattern of report well. Autogunners. The JSDF had been in play.

The pitter patter that was almost like rain. Machinegun fire in Tokyo. To think it came to that. Emerson shook his head in pity as he patted Masterson's shoulder, he taking point as they started the long route around.

* * *

It was a straight run for Hitman to the Embassy: the main enemy force had been, evidently, behind them, preparing for an attack on the Imperial Palace. The dragons above had spread out, thinning out their coverage inadvertently. They had seen the enemy in silhouettes and from above, at a distance, but now, approaching the street of the American Embassy and the gated wall it took up of one block, it was being sieged by a legion of Romans. They approached from behind as, finally, a block themselves away, they stopped, aimed, and wondered what they should do.

Bannon's voice was like a bark: yelling out at Romans trying to scale the gated walls and bashing down at them. The most successful of them: giant bipedal pigs, swinging grotesque axes at the metal poles. Why had none of the Marine guard been shooting?

Because to open fire, Bannon figured, would to be declare something far bigger than any of them. These weren't terrorists or a rogue faction of extremists. This was an obvious military, backed by an unknown government. Roman or not. Real or not, the danger was there.

Bannon yelled out at them and the back rows turned around to see, only for them to coax the attention of the, seemingly, hundred or so strong Legion.

Corporal Brian Harris was a larger man, a former college football player. He could've gone pro had it not been his inexplicable decision to join the US Army Rangers. All of his mass was heard when it hit the concrete road, the man going prone as he prepped his M240 machine gun.

Up and down the line the Rangers had similarly gone to prone or taken a kneel, guns aimed down range, prepared to do the inevitable.

They didn't speak their tongue, know who they were, but it was understood the second the rear sections of the Legions raised their shields at them and started their slow, calculated march toward them.

That was that.

The first official engagement between the United States Military and an enemy from another world had happened no less before the American Embassy in Tokyo.

The Rangers were, admittedly, totally out of order. Some had hoodies on, t-shirts, the bare minimums for their battle dress for those that did have their combat uniforms on. Others had jeans, sweatpants, sneakers instead of combat boots. Their gear had been painted in the camouflage meant for an Asian ground war. Green, beiges and greys all conflating together to break shapes. Something that the enemy could not understand as much as the Rangers didn't understand them.

There was a common language between them however.

One of military and combat.

One that they understood the second that phalanx turned toward them, and like a single, cohesive unit, began to march toward the Rangers.

Everything was understood then, and Bannon could've rendered her orders. "Take 'em down!"

Mk16Mod2. Mk18Mod0. M110A1. M1014. 5.56 by 45 millimeter. 7.62 full metal jacket. Terminology, words, items and objects that made way for that difference between worlds to be understood by a type of warfare waged.

Gunfire erupted in one unkind, metallic sweep. Even with some of the rifles sporting suppressors the clatter of gunfire piercing steel and wood joined the chaos of spent cartridges falling to the ground only after the hard thumps of bodies. Death that instantaneous had never been experienced before by men of the nature they were shooting at, and for that, it was a mercy, and a horror at the same time as the men at the front crumpled like paper beneath a fire. Holes in hearts, in minds, in armor itself appeared out of thin air to the Romans, and soon enough they couldn't breathe, for their lungs had been punched through and they were sucking their own blood, balance taken beneath them as for the first time that day, militaries had clashed.

The Rangers there. They knew what it was like to take a life. From hundreds of yards away, from inches, doorway to doorway, in their face or from across the horizon. These Rangers had waged war on Terror itself, and lost. The victories they found were in the failures of diplomacy: in killing people. As the last body hit the ground, the reality of the situation, of what they were doing, set in:

They just opened fire against a Roman legion and cut them down.

When realities clashed, the truth that came out was stranger than fiction. It came out with bodies hitting concrete in metal clattering, and people sucking on their own blood as they gasped for the very last breaths they would ever had.

"Push!" Bannon formed a fist, pushing out toward the fallen phalanx as the line of Rangers pushed forward, riflemen and Rangers on point putting themselves ahead as they found themselves before the bodies first.

No magic. No deception. Just the simple matter of fact they had stepped before Romans, and the Romans lost.

"Loke!" The darker woman was called for. She was a smaller build, shorter than most of her platoon, but it gave her cause to be a Pointperson: those who stepped through breach doors first and were the tip of the spear. The Pakistani-American woman heard Bannon slip on saying her name, pronouncing it more like Lock, but it was understandable now as she turned, rifle still trained out and down at the Romans. "Take point!"

"Affirmative!" She responded back, stepping over the bodies, that wriggling mass of men and armor that cried in agony as they died.

There was no danger, but there was morbidity in how uniform they fell: shields and spears tossed asides as bodies writhed. A hand would reach up occasionally, toward the Rangers as they came past, but no help came. They were busy, and, like that, they would die on a foreign land as the Rangers came to the embassy gates.

As they passed those that even twisted toward them had been snapped at, gunfire in the singular ringing out as those that wriggled on the ground that even regarded the Rangers were cut down without second thought.

Every Ranger there had seen combat, survived it, known it. An even inkling of indiscretion ranging from battlefield hesitations was lethal if acted upon. So that's why they looked down through their sights at men dead in less than a minute, and still, with any hint of wanting to go to any weapon, or to move their hands up at them, were cut down with a single gunshot.

Finally arriving at the gates they all had turned back around from where they came, the mass of bodies still as blood ran through Tokyo streets by their action.

The gate shut tight.

Maybe it was better that way.

The dents and scoring from men trying to break through had been grisly, metal bent and almost through.

A man had emerged from the embassy building, running at them: Clad in the desert fatigues of the Marine Corps with a shotgun in his hand. An Embassy Guard.

"Friendlies!" One of the Rangers called out as the Embassy Guard had gotten to the gate.

"You the Embassy staff's ride out of here?!" He yelled at them, his helmet on haphazardly as the carbon scoring from a shotgun in use had made clear what he had been doing. Warning shots perhaps?

"Affirmative." Bannon responded, going to the same grate as the Marine. "What's the situation on the ground?"

The Marine had met them at the Gate, punching through the guard booth's window and finding the lock to open it up, when it had barely been big enough that's when the Rangers started shuffling through as the dead writhed beneath them.

Bannon had convened with the Marine. It had been a day for him, and the look on his face saw a knowingness that this wouldn't be the end of it, gesturing back at the white building. "Embassy staff are in the safe room and we sent a squad out to the residences. We have comms with the Swedish, Canadian, and Cuban guards but the net is way too crowded!"

The Ranger in command nodded at the Marine hurriedly, hand on his shoulder, turning him around. "Get any embassy staff that can move out of here, we're bringing down evac."

The Marine responded gutturally, taking back into the building, the gun barrels of M4s poking out of windows that refused to fire until given the go ahead. This was too much to comprehend, she understood. A Roman legion attacking Tokyo? She shook her head, pushing that thought off perhaps for all time. "My team on me! Ramirez! Hit the embassy! Get our people out! Nutt! Recall the helos!"

Ramirez had already been on it as he pushed through opening the doors with his element and coaxing people out.

Corporal Donald Nutt had taken a knee in cover, going for his radio, slinging his grenade launcher behind his back. "On it!'

Bannon followed the Marine in, only to be beaten back by a hurried procession of people running out to meet her as if she had been their personal savior. She had no time for them as she looked down and away, forcing through them.

She was led upstairs, finding a conference room with a direct view outside, Marine riflemen aiming their guns out as a radio set sat on the table in the middle. It was a Marine Captain that received her as the two locked eyes.

"You have engagement authority, ma'am?" He asked, his head cricked as the receiver was wedged between his neck and ear.

She nodded once with as much confidence as she could garner. "Our tasking is to evacuate personnel. They were in the way, Captain."

"I see."

The Black Hawk choppers had returned to in front of the Embassy, touching down as civilians piled into them, the Marines overlooking them.

"What the hell is happening, Captain?"

The Marine shook his head as he slammed the receiver back into its retaining piece. Nothing was getting through that hadn't been further than a few blocks.

"Fuck if I know. We had reports less than half an hour ago about a terrorist attack so we began lock down procedures, however the crowds came running and a god damn Roman legion showed up. We hunkered in place, however we can't raise anyone on the horn."

Bannon nodded. "We saw those dragons hitting infrastructure on the way in, and god knows that we have a million people trying to use their own devices right now."

The Marine motioned out to the bodies they left outside. "But knocking out our radios? They're using fucking swords and spears. How do they have ECM capabilities?"

Bannon shrugged as the Black Hawks loaded as much as they could, the remainder led back inside for safety as the choppers took off and her men made a perimeter.

"What embassies do you have comms with?"

"Canadians, Swedes, Cubans. I've been trying to raise the Brits and the Israelis."

Bannon had remembered the pre-planning maps for the evacuations. "How about the Kurds?"

The Marine shook his head. "They haven't cleared out the Saudis shit, their Embassy hasn't been converted yet… What're your orders after extract?"

Bannon sucked in her teeth, trying to make her ragged, rough voice clear as possible. "Usually I'm supposed to link up with the main counterattack force, but, well-" She was short of saying that it hadn't been the Chinese who showed up. "There is none."

"Yeah, as far as doctrine goes you're pretty early."

"Rangers lead the way."

"Don't give me that hooah shit meateater." The Captain listened in with his headphones, looking to his RTO. "JSDF isn't even here yet."

Bannon knew. "A good amount of this region's combat effectives are still in Korea, a larger portion of the JSDF still occupied with the Containment Zone."

No orders, but Bannon had something she so much wanted to do. Yet to throw herself, and her men, into the unknown? That Marine Captain might've just shot her right there. So they stayed, the tantalizing security they kept as the choppers circled around again to pick up the last batch of civilians thick with tension as the sounds of urban warfare were waged streets down, at the Imperial Palace. Police were trying their best to maintain the perimeter.

It was as the final civilians were being lifted out, a miracle: the radio had started buzzing as the Captain rose the radio's volume to broadcast.

_"This is COM US JAPAN. Assuming headquarters callsign as Ticonderoga. This is Ticonderoga Actual to all active US military elements within the State of Japan, we are now at DEFCON 2, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the President have made the call. I repeat. We are now at DEFCON 2. Proceed with OPPLAN 6001. Japan is under attack. A state of war now exists within the territory of Japan."_ An old treaty, one over half a century old, would be enforced today, for the first time in history. A treaty of mutual cooperation and security between the United States and Japan. _"This is Ticonderoga Actual to all currently engaged US military assets. Contact your nearest HQ for further instruction. God speed."_

Bannon went to answer, the Captain offering her his comms, however a familiar voice came through first: one of the men they had come to Tokyo to save.

_"This is Hitman 1-6 Actual. You have Rangers on the ground."_

* * *

General Chigurh Andrade had been the Commander of United States Forces in Japan. The most senior representative of the US Military in the Japanese sphere. With it, came the experience of a man who had survived the Forever War. He was there when it began, and there when it ended. He was the first man in the cockpit, that day, in a September a long time ago as the orders were given and all civilian and commercial flights were told to ground.

He was there over Afghanistan, bombing Tora Bora, trying to coax the leader of Al-Qaeda out of his hole.

He was there, over Iraq, as Saddam Hussein held his final stand against the world.

When Saudi Arabia was buried alive by modernity and extremity, and when Iran tore itself apart, he too flew overhead and became witness to history of this new world.

When, finally, the DMZ blew open, and North Korea dared the world one final time, he too was there to see the last embers of the Cold War stamped out beneath firepower so cruel, the dead screamed at the victorious.

The world fell apart, and he had been on the job for it.

So too, he would be there, at Yokota AFB, one hour from Ginza as he spoke to the world that war had come to Japan again.

The situation room of Yokota AFB had been on fire, figuratively, as the Marines of the 7th MEU had all piled out onto the tarmac await the ready for their deployment orders.

"Rangers on the ground? Already?" That piece of information was relayed as a Lieutenant Emerson identified himself over comms.

Colonel Adrian Pierce was surprised. In a certain light, people often remarked he looked like a younger Harrison Ford. He carried around the disposition of the older Harrison Ford however. He licked the front of his teeth as he glanced at General Andrade, the Marine Commander of the 7th Marine Expeditionary Unit ready for action.

They were all looking at a digital map of the AO: Tokyo itself. They both feared the day that this would be the view, however things were not right.

"New detail added to the plan in case of Chinese invasion sir," One of the aides explained for Andrade as he nodded. "Ranger group inserts into the city at any sign of national danger and secures embassy and personnel, after that they play it by ear and reform into main counter-element if so necessary."

"Why?" Pierce asked, wondering why he hadn't been briefed.

"Benghazi."

A foreign policy scar, still relevant. "Ah. Do we have comms with them?"

Andrade nodded, the sheen of his grey hair shining in the fluorescent lights of the situation room. Much of the command staff of the USFJ had ben there, but none of the JSDF representatives. It was understandable, given the circumstances: the JSDF had been spread thin across manpower and organization between Korea and Fukushima, however it meant only one thing that day.

One of the representatives from the Naval Seabees had piped up. "Comms are still spotty, up and down. Lieutenants and base commanders from JSDF bases hours out are finally radioing in, but anything in Tokyo? It just went back up right now."

"And the reports are all, one hundred percent accurate?"

To verbalize it would be to go down in history as the US official to fully recognize that the Roman Empire, seemingly, had come to Tokyo in conquest. But that's what it was.

Andrade was an Air Force man, he knew more than anyone there that air superiority had been, at minimum, a necessary in modern warfare. Though this hadn't been modern warfare being waged: the in between, the clash of cultures. He knew what side he was on.

"Everything that isn't military. Ground it."

One of the officers seemed shocked. "Do we have that authority?"

"Put it through the towers." Andrade confirmed, ignoring almost before turning to one of the dissenting officers. "Article V."

_Each Party recognizes that an armed attack against either Party in the territories under the administration of Japan would be dangerous to its own peace and safety and declares that it would act to meet the common danger in accordance with its constitutional provisions and processes. Any such armed attack and all measures taken as a result thereof shall be immediately reported to the Security Council of the United Nations in accordance with the provisions of Article 51 of the Charter. Such measures shall be terminated when the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to restore and maintain international peace and security._

Free engagement as warranted, and the US had, somehow, on the Japanese home field been called up to bat first.

"Pierce, what do we have?" One of Andrade's own officers spoke to the Marine Colonel.

The man ran his hands down from his face, squinting at the map before clacking his teeth. He had a tic, one that was fairly unique to him. Almost at once the front row of his teeth dropped down on onto his lips, bobbing, before being set back. Once, long ago, he had been a man on the frontline. That meant he had taken a shovel to the face when the North Koreans came for him. The story of how he had gotten his Medal of Honor was a story he had paid for, both in his own blood and the blood of his men, so a moment of apprehension was on him again. He was going to war.

"My MEU's GCE is here. Platoon of tanks, four sections of LAVs. Full battalion is ready, infantry wise."

"How's your air support?"

"On the Fallujah, and we haven't been able to hail them. Lieutenant Colonel Noelle should be ready though."

Andrade grimaced as he looked at the map. Sure, there were a thousand roads going into Tokyo, but clear enough to support an armored column? They'd be lucky if they could get outside of the base on such short notice. It's why he asked for a clear sky.

Andrade sucked in his breath, like so many people of power before him in history, making the decision that would undoubtedly be of history. "Ladies and gentlemen. I'm making the call. Colonel Pierce, have your armored link up with JSDF elements when they're ready and make contact, but I'm providing my Black Hawks for insertion effective immediately. We need to just get boots on the ground as soon as we can. Can't have just a handful of Rangers holding back this. We're gonna cascade this response, get what we can going when it can. I'll scramble fighter patrols now to establish air superiority in Tokyo's ADEZ, but I can't risk anti-air intervention over Tokyo. If it comes to down to actually shooting dragons, we'll do it old fashioned. Proceed with the OPPLAN. My callsign will be Ticonderoga Actual."

"Yes sir!" Resounding, it echoed.

"Dismissed." Andrade nodded, a war path made, and went on.

Only two officers in that room would be gearing up at all, going into the fray. It would be Pierce himself and his XO: a brutish Major of a man. Echoes of Richard Nixon shaped itself on his face, but that was good. Pierce was glad that Isaiah Sevson was his XO.

Walking down those halls again, distinctly into battle, there was a dissonance to the cleanliness of the halls of Yokota, knowing what they were going into.

"We were always frontline people anyway." That's what Sevson told Pierce as they geared up. While here at Yokota for training they had their own corners of the officer's dorms, it now empty, only adding contrast to how dirty the aura of where Sevson and Pierce set themselves were.

"Times have changed." Pierce responded back, sliding on his plate carrier, making sure his fighting gear was on. To think someone of his rank actually getting into direct contact. It felt right and wrong at the same time, but again, nothing about the US Military was simple nowadays.

* * *

Shooting people.

More reactionary than purposeful; the way a dog reacts to a snap of their master's hands, or a way a person reacts when their knee is tapped by a doctor. With guns in their hands, the conditioning and training behind it, the natural outcome to what two men with guns would do when presented with Romans standing over the dead had been no question.

Emerson and Masterson had pushed past the glass doors, just a block away from the Ginza Crossing; the perfect visage of Tokyo to the tourist. Still there had been that imposing monument, that stone Gate and its armies below. It was not far from the convention center where the Japanese fandom convention was being held. Emerson couldn't remember the name of it, but Masterson had reminded him as he stumbled for the word, prior to breaching into that building:

_"We can't get to- to- what the fuck was it called?"_

_ "Comiket."_

_ "Yeah, whatever. We need to establish forward positions and have reinforcements rally to us."_

_ "Every second we wait-"_

_ "I know! I know! But it's suicide to keep going!"_

The main mass of the Roman force had been behind them, slinking behind enemy lines like good special operators. Still what the Romans had left behind had been nothing more than massacre: charred bodies and corpses lined the streets, no regard to age or gender. Was it a tragedy that after so many bodies, he couldn't afford to be phased by the sight of them? Emerson thought darkly before he remembered it was his duty to add Romans to that pile, for that pile.

The heavy glass doors opened as Masterson, one arm still propping his shotgun into his shoulder, opened fire at two Romans in the lobby of that office building, a dead man at their feet, his blood pooling around his black suit.

Emerson saw the pieces of the Roman hit by the shotgun blast get thrown to the floor in the metal slurry of flesh and blood, sparks from buckshot interacting with the metal of his armor plates. Frozen: The look on the remaining Roman's face as Emerson saw it through the sights of his MP5. His chin was chipped off in between the muzzleflash, his neck taking the brunt of the short burst Emerson let off as his trigger finger depressed, his body moving into the lobby as Masterson pumped another shell in, pushing past the two men. A Roman had been behind the desk of the lobby, peering his head up to see what had been going on, however another shotgun blast had removed it, painting the white and artdeco wall behind him red.

Metal and flesh collapsed to the ground as Emerson turned around immediately, barring the door closed with a sword from one of the fallen Romans.

"Clear."

"Clear."

The two men spoke to each other in ritual, Masterson thumbing in two shells as he peeked around the lobby, the rumble of dragons still flying above vibrating the world in subtle motions.

That was when the screaming started. The crack of concrete against soft flesh. When the two men had looked outside all they had seen was the broken body of someone that had not been there seconds before, a laminated keycard around what was left of her neck: she fell face first onto the ground, what had been emptied of her being washed away by streets run red and wet with the rain above and its blood below.

Masterson was already running to the stairwell before Emerson even considered yelling their orders: Stop this.

Reloading his gun as he walked upstairs, the two had stopped at every floor, peering in at the side facing the street. Nothing. It was only at the top floors did they hear the sounds of struggle and mania, of people being forced over the side for a cruel death.

Masterson, he had again held his shotgun with one hand as he stacked against the door, his left hand holding a cylindrical tube, the thumb hooked around a pin.

Masterson had always been one of those operators, as far as Emerson had known him in the two months he had been deployed. He was one of those rare sorts, born from that new kind of world. A sergeant by recognition, as opposed to promotion. Out in the field, the urban wars of today, he had done his job. He sucked in his breath, locked his jaw, his left arm hitting the door knob as his leg kicked in that door and tossed in the flash grenade with a violence typical of people in their profession

The great concussive blast and the flash of white that came and went through the door was followed by male screaming, groans. That was their cue as Masterson nearly threw himself through the door as the two men did a dance known as breaching and clearing.

Assuming that each floor had been designed the same, the two men's minds went on autopilot as, without a word, they came through and each hugged either left or right. Cubicles had filled out the center of the room, most of them collapsed by the ransacking by the Romans. There had been several Legionnaires there, hugging the windows as office workers were forced down on their knees before them, they too wriggling in audio and visual pain: an open window foreboding.

More than that though: a pig.

Like in those Grecian or Roman tales of old, Emerson hadn't believed his eyes from the distance: seeing these creatures from a Disney movie gone wrong.

But here, before them, its anthropomorphic arms clutching its eyes in pain as it squealed, had been a monster of a living creature: the top half of its body a wild boar, the bottom bipedal, hanging from its wrist being great cleavers chained to it.

Masterson had been a man for words; of speech and grand standing. He had an encyclopedia of moto phrases and cool things to say at every moment's notice. He had nothing to say however as he aimed his shotgun squarely at the beast, and instead lived out a term:

If God created man, then Sam Colt made them equal.

The equalizing force of a shotgun to that seven-foot beast was absolute as he held down the trigger, and racked the pump, slam firing dozens and dozens of buckshot pellets into it. Adrenaline alone had numbed the pain of his injury, rubbing red beneath its wrapping.

Emerson had known Masterson had his sector as he banged right, overlooking, directly, the hostages and the Romans. It was lucky that the hostages had been sitting down, which gave Emerson clearance to just hold down his own trigger and sweep across the Romans as they all contorted under gunfire:

There had been one exception though: a Roman had held, as he was disoriented, a woman, next to be thrown out the window, the two caught in some messy tangle as they stumbled where they were. The margin of error: none.

The sling on Emerson's MP5 went taut as he gripped it, sucking in a breath, seeing the Roman fight with himself and the hostage as she tried to tear herself away in blindness.

Elsewhere the squeals of the pig reached a crescendo as, finally, the hostage yanked one direction, outstretching the Roman's arm as Emerson pushed forward and squeezed off the shot, killing the man as he landed on top of a hostage.

Emerson had reached out as he approached her, still dazed and confused, only pushing her down to the ground again as he pushed through the rest of the room till he reached the other side, turning back around. Masterson had done the same as the pig fell.

The MP5's mag clattered on the ground as in one motion Emerson had racked the bolt back, and then forward with a slap after placing in a new one, sending a round chambered as men lay dying at their feet. God knew that this hadn't been the first time they were ever like this: breaching office buildings against men who wanted them dead, but they themselves already lost.

No words needed to be exchanged by the two men as Masterson went into his pocket to reload, going to inner offices of that floor as Emerson went to the hostages, looking inward into the room as they scanned the cubicles again, seeing only men and beast dying or dead in their armor, their breaths giving out as the two men reconvened.

"Clear."

"Clear." They men rattled off, looking back the way they came before both going to the windows and the hostages.

"Hey! Hey!" Emerson spoke in English as he kicked the body of the Roman off of an office man, the entire group only now recovering from their exposure to Masterson's flash bang. Switching over to Japanese had been easy enough. "Go! All of you! Go in there!" He pointed at one of the offices as the hostages bombarded him with questions. They had gone anyway, Masterson assuring them they would be alright, locking the door behind them.

To say Emerson had been a new Ranger would've been only in comparison to his peers. He was new, yes, but he had been to war. What Ranger hadn't been at that point? Sent back into Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan all over. Sent to Africa and the Gulf, fighting wars that never existed on missions that never happened. Sent to Iran as the world imploded over Middle Eastern peace, one last time. In the early days of that final invasion, Emerson was tasked with forward observer.

With those wall-sized windows, he and Masterson were granted a forward view of the largest massing of an army in the middle of Tokyo since, perhaps, the end of the Shogunate.

The lieutenant thumbed his radio. "Hitman 1-6 to any on this net, how copy."

He heard Japanese in response, and he repeated the message in the language.

"Please identify yourself Hitman 1-6. Over." Emerson heard the beat of chopper blades behind the message, staring down at the impossibility he saw.

"Hitman 1-6, forward observers, US Army Rangers. We are currently overlooking Ginza Crossing." The center of Ginza, where, in its place instead of the mass of crowds and commerce, had been nothing more than a giant pantheon. A Gate. Leading, not to one side or another, but into blackness: from that blackness marched men and beasts of Rome, hell-bent on war. There was an organization to it, an intent and strategy of warfare: on how men marched in lines with support weaponry and siege tactics, spreading out from their own rally point out into Tokyo. If someone, a drone operator or any air support could've seen what the two men saw, they would've seen a target beyond debate. To drop any explosive support would've meant to destroy that entire block, ruin it beyond comprehension. "Mass enemy concentrations are centered on the Ginza Crossing. I repeat, the enemy's staging point is Ginza Crossing, how copy?"

A few pauses before the concentrated pilot that had answered them responded. "Copy all, Hitman 1-6. Relaying info up the chain-"

Another voice intruded. "Hitman 1-6, Hitman 1-6, this is Sicario Actual, say again your position."

Emerson and Masterson looked to each other. Sicario had been the callsign for the closest Marine company: The 7th Marine Expeditionary Unit, based off the USS Fallujah. Commanded by a man that even the Rangers knew, it was his voice on the radio asking for Emerson. Colonel Adrian Pierce would come to them, hell or highwater.

Emerson reiterated the address of his building into the radio, a few beats passing.

"Who deployed you, son?"

Emerson needed to laugh at himself as they saw their bloody reflections in the windows. "Wrong place, wrong time, Colonel. Linked up with Japanese police elements and acquired equipment. Over."

"Right time, Ranger. Marines are coming to you now via Blackhawk."

"Roger. Be advised, we are conducting SAR for one of our elements."

It was bold to say that Emerson had assigned himself his own orders, right directly to Command, but a few beats passed before they responded. "Copy. Standby for relief."

"I know that building. Office space." Hitman's sniper had rattled off, she bent at an angle so that she could use a knocked over mailbox as a stand for her DMR. Ever since the Rangers had left the embassy, they had been tearing through Ginza streets, circling the area as more and more civilians found them and were sent away behind them. It wasn't clean, but the type of spiral they did kept them on the move, on the sweep. They had pushed off the Embassy the second Emerson had revealed himself over comms. It was no guarantee that he would've been able to hear a message put out, so pragmatic as they were they just pushed for a rally on their own accord.

The team's autogunner had pushed himself off his stomach from the road, removing himself from laying amongst the bodies of Roman and Japanese dead. The sound of gunfire going off from the Imperial Palace had been deafening in those urban streets, heard even blocks down where Hitman was.

"Feel like we should have at least a JSDF attache with us." Ramirez had muttered. Bannon was going to answer him; said that the JSDF responsibility was to protect civilians, not press counter-offensives. The US OPPLAN cleanly noted that counter-offensive operations would be conducted by US military units able to carry out. She didn't say as their sniper shot off another booming shot, the head of a rider blown off, blocks down, his horse continuing on with his body like a ragdoll.

"Orders, ma'am?"

Bannon stared out down the street, almost like a mirage there were distant Roman legions still amassing, still getting ready for war; war against them and them alone.

Bannon had picked herself up from her kneel as she patted Hitman's sniper's shoulder. "Lead the way, we'll link up with Kay and Cam."

The sniper nodded, reloading her Mk 20 rifle before pointing down the street.

Before they had all left however, the sound of it had been unmistakable as a shadow was cast over Hitman.

There be dragons.

Hitman's autogunner had grabbed the closest man with hearing protection as he levied his 240 on his shoulder. "Stay the fuck still." The impromptu living turret gimbal had grabbed his 240's bipod to brace as the great wyvern of fantasy blasted over them, buzzing them like a jet. Bannon yelled out, getting her Rangers to either side of the street, in shelter as if taking a strafe.

The rider of the wyvern saw another bunch of targets, simply, the nearly twenty men and women grouped so deliciously together.

The difference between them and so many helpless Japanese civilians beforehand had been this:

They shot back.

As the wyvern banked around again, lining up with the street Hitman was on, every single Ranger had aimed back. Rain fell, and tracers went up. Death came to the Wyverns for the first time that day; death by a thousand cuts. Accuracy came by volume of fire as bullets imbedded themselves into it, a pain it had never felt before as it twisted its form, exposing its rider to the gunfire as he was cut through.

His body had fallen first, smashing the several story difference as his dragon fell on top of him in a messy, glass shattering, tooth vibrating impact. The crater that was left had been down the street, filling in with rain as the Rangers sucked in air through their teeth and beat back the thought that they had just shot down a beast.

Mags dropped, barrels steamed, they knew war had changed.

* * *

The deck crew of the USS Fallujah had cleared the deck as all the pre-flight checks were complete. It was a helluva call to make, but it was a call that needed to be made. Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Noelle had been one of the very first pilots of the F-35 platform in the Marine Corps Aviation, attached to the newly minted 7th MEU. His aptitude with the platform came from a place that had widened his veins and hardened his heart. He had been one of the first new aces of that world: taken by the blood of at least five enemy fighters when the Korean War came to resume.

Five, and then five more; and then five more after that.

Hips and Hinds, MiGs and Sukhois. Of all that he had shot down in his career, he never though the next bandits on his list would be of flesh and blood: Dragons.

He felt that familiar pit in his stomach as he pulled the throttle on his engine, the aircraft's nozzle pointing down and propelling him off the flat deck of the Fallujah as the rest of the crew had been running to their battlestations. There was no more hesitation. This was war.

War that had made Japanese civilians come to the edges of the dock and stay there, as if under the umbrella of the Fallujah's protection, sailors going forth and wondering what the hell was happening as the communications black out resounded until at last, it came through:

The OPPLAN for the defense of Tokyo had been called.

"Vegas Lead. You're clear."

The Escort Carrier's traffic controller had given him the greenlight, and even though he was no more than a few dozen yards away, even as he elevated, he heard the static interference. He was the only one going up at the moment to ascertain the situation.

The Fallujah itself had been slowly steaming away from port to the cries of Japanese civilians. They wouldn't understand however, if CIWS were to go off, the chances of catching the Tokyo skyline in its fire had been dangerously plausible.

Leveling off at a safe altitude Noelle had gradually shifted his VTOL aircraft into standard flight, pushing himself forward until he had been away at full, hooking his oxygen mask on.

His callsign had been Vegas 1, his tac name: Blueway.

He wouldn't be the first to respond to the battle today, but he had been the first to come with a fighter jet.

The entire damned ship had seen what had been floating above Tokyo: some had mistaken them for birds, planes, but the second the roars had started, the puffs of smoke and fire emanating from their necks shown, seeing was believing.

It was decided, without an official call, that only one pilot would scramble: the leader of the 7th MEU's fighter group. Today had been that day of days were the regulation of modern warfighting contended with exceptions, even now.

He couldn't quite believe his eyes as he had blasted over Tokyo, seeing, from his altitude, the beasts of the skies also crane their heads at him in disbelief.

At least a dozen or more, in his quick visual scan he picked up: all of them hugging the Tokyo skyline. He was in no place to open fire; it wasn't as if he had been cleared to engage, but any ordnance that he had would've done too much collateral, between cannon rounds or his Sidewinders.

"This is Vegas Lead to any on this net, how copy?"

Throwing himself up to a suitable altitude above Tokyo he had hoped to clear whatever interference they had contended with, and indeed, it had helped.

Nothing but static and garbled Japanese, banking left over the city he had only visually caught the first sight of the JSDF: attack helicopters over the outskirts of the city… If he could drag dragons out that way then perhaps… Animals were still animals, born to hunt prey. He could play the part for a bit.

He would be busy today. If they wanted to play cat and mouse, he would play, drawing contrails for the dragons to follow out toward the choppers.

* * *

There was a thought to Itami, as the armored trucks and the Hueys of his JSDF come forth to the Imperial Palace, that he was a lucky man.

They had arrived minutes after the two Americans had left, dropping off the first infantry, relieving the police from their firing positions as fully automatic weapons tore up the legions that pressed themselves across the canals surrounding the Imperial castle, crosses holding the bodies of Japanese civilians that had been caught. The anger that drew, it was answered in automatic gunfire.

A flight of Japanese Cobras had been off in the distance, turning toward Tokyo as Itami got sporadic chatter over the net, they were engaging dragons in concert with a lone American jet. As long as he hadn't been called, and he had been called to serve a lot recently, he would remain there in the palace, organizing people, trying to find their families and friends.

He wasn't so lucky after all.

"Who's in charge here?" Itami recognized the voice, caught half-way in between a group of children, huddling them together to keep track of them in a corner of the packed Imperial garden, police officers watching over them.

"Lieutenant General Hazama!" He had squared his shoulders, salute given as he signaled for the squared faced, older, tanned man. A great moustache had been greyed on his face as he turned over to look at him, two of his staff with him, all of them armored up surprisingly.

"Report." He had walked over as the children hid behind him, scared that day, even from this man.

"First Lieutenant Itami, sir."

So too did Hazama recognize the taller man. "You were one of the first volunteers?"

Weakly, Itami had affirmed with a nod. The stuff he had seen… "Yes, sir."

"You have a talent for taking command, don't you?"

If it wasn't for the grim situation, he would've played it off. But no, not today, he couldn't joke as he felt a few young children grab his arm, not wanting to let go. They were silent, scared, not knowing what was happening as the bursts of gunfire sounded so near. Hazama had seen this, tucking in his lips before nodding once. "I was gonna ask you to take a squad for the counter-offensive… but you seem pre-occupied with… this."

Itami nodded. "Yes sir."

"You've saved many lives today, Itami. As you were."

The two men had saluted as Hazama went off, surveying the situation as beneath his breath ushered orders for the counter-attack. Rangers had identified the core staging point for the Romans apparently.

If Itami could've seen past those walls, he would've seen men cut down like wheat with how they lined up and fell, the once impenetrable shield wall they put up cut down with a line of machine gun fire. A meatgrinder by any other name. These Roman Legions never knew surrender, so when they ran, they did it in fear.

* * *

The great rushing up the stairwell had alarmed the two Rangers at first as they twisted over, anticipating the door to be thrown open and reveal Legionnaires that had somehow gotten past them all. A voice came in first however.

"Friendlies!"

A familiar voice, one that had been followed by the way a door was kicked open: Form where they came from, familiar friends, loaded for bear.

It was Hitman, whole save for one. Nineteen out of twenty.

They shuffled into the room in one smooth, break-neck fast maneuver, as if breaching, but there was nothing to fear as all they found was two men. Their two men. So differently dressed for that matter, but that entire day everyone had to have made due.

"Lieutenant." At the rear section had been Bannon, breaking through as several of the Hitmen went out the way they came, securing the stairs as the rest went to the windows without words, mounting weapons. She approached, Emerson with a hand out casually, she taking and shaking roughly as, as soon as that was over, she breathlessly looked over at Masterson. "Cam…"

"Lisa." He responded to her, words dripping with weight, the two locking eyes as her mouth straightened into a thin line.

Emerson had ignored. He knew what they had.

There were bigger fish to fry, and he had command back. "Cam, take Weapons up to the roof. Hold and secure. Bannon, sweep this building and then hold ground floor. We'll wait for the QRF to link up."

"What's our prerogative, sir?" Bannon asked, glad, at least, the two of them were okay.

Two, Emerson thought as he had peered down the street at the massing army, seeing more and more people and beasts blip out of the black. "We hold a forward position, then SAR when relieved."

Masterson had paused for a moment before carrying out the order, waiting for Emerson to elaborate, to tell more. Bannon had outright asked. "Where was he?"

Masterson answered. "Convention center. I couldn't get to him." The shame on his tongue had been palpable, like poison.

Emerson didn't want him to stew in it. "Go. That's an order." An officer to his soldiers. Now was the time for him to be that person: Lieutenant Kristian Emerson.

Bannon held her breath as Emerson stared out one last time to the window, only to thumb the radio again as he wiped a desk down to work with. She rolled her knuckles against the remaining man's side, just above where the arrow had hit, her eyes looking up to his, begging with an unsaid question. He had only taken it in at that moment, grimacing. "I'll be fine, Sergeant." Masterson referred to her with the formality of war.

"Sergeant." She said back. "Everyone not on Weapons! On me! We're sweeping this building up down and then securing the perimeter!"

As quickly as Hitman came, they had cleared the floor, leaving Emerson looking down the way as he had unhooked the radio from his vest, returning to the table with a tourist map of Tokyo. Command was his.

"This is Hitman 1-6 Actual. We are establishing a forward position, all forces, rally on us."

* * *

Pierce and Sevson had ridden in on choppers with their men, just as they should've, just like Kilgore did. There was no bombast to it however, not with comms still as spotty as they were. One might've thought that urban comms in such a city might've been refined after Pyongyang and Tehran, but nothing was ever logically done in the war machine it felt.

One thing he could rely on were the Marines with wings. Save for the armor, all of his Marines had been airborne at that very moment, ferried by Andrade's Black Hawks as they formed up with the first responding Japanese Cobra choppers. One of his Marines held against the rest though. His contrails had painted the grey sky, leading dragons to them like bait.

Another dragon had fallen, mince-meat, drawn out to the less populated outskirts of Tokyo with the procession of helicopters waiting for orders or clearance to go in. JSDF airborne had been ready, but an argument had been going on over the Japanese net. One that Pierce couldn't quite decipher save for this:

"Are we cleared to open fire into the city?" There was a pregnant pause as the Japanese attack helicopters waited for their answer. If he had Cobras to support, that would've been great.

Again though, nothing was ever easy or simple or right.

"Standby." Japanese GHQ had answered.

Pierce had sat in the middle of one of the Black Hawks, sandwiched between his Marines. All of them had been veterans, victors and losers of battles both modern and historical if felt. They had been to the Sandbox, to Korea, to Mexico even, but now in Tokyo their battles were now ancient.

They would be fine.

"Sicario Actual to Hitman. How copy Hitman?" He had motioned for his RTO, sending off a message.

"Hitman 1-6. Go ahead Sicario."

"Pop smoke. We're inbound, hot."

With one hand gesture to the pilot, a squadron of Black Hawks took the lead and flew into Tokyo, ferrying with them American Marines into the heart of a city on fire.

* * *

Masterson had been quick on the draw as soon as he heard the orders over comms, thumbing to the grenadier of Hitman. He had nodded simply as Masterson made the hand signal: colored smoke. Metal canisters were drawn and cracked on the roof as red clouds erupted up, a beacon for the incoming Black Hawks. Dragons overhead had been thinning thanks to the baiting of the solitary F-35. It was only natural now would be the time to move in.

Hitman's marksmen and sniper had added their punches to the acoustic warfare, competing with the jet above, mounted on the sides of the building, looking down the angles and shooting at horses and riders, all those who dared wander anywhere near that block as in the hazy distance, another Roman army assembled around the gate in the distance. As if a giant concert, the mass of people had awaited there for orders.

Another radio message, in Japanese._ "All forward elements, be advised, we have retreating enemy forces coming your way, advise taking positions."_

Masterson had been first over the edge, only to realize he had a shotgun, motioning for his marksmen to take position instead. Still, as they passed one had caught his shoulder. Ryan Valentine. Corporal. A young man, newlywed, a child on the way. His eyes had always been squinting as if looking for the details required of him in his profession. "You're shaking."

Masterson's arms and legs had been jittering, adrenaline making a piece of work of him. Still there was something more to it. He wanted to move, to go, though he had his orders right now.

He only shook off the hand as he took a knee again, breathing hard, making the air in and out of him cycle as if trying to take back something he had lost.

Emerson below had been already shouting orders in anticipation. The JSDF had finally been pushing a counter attack, vectored out from the Palace.

"Bannon! Set up firing positions on this side, in the lobby, and across the street!" He ordered.

"On it!" Bannon a floor below Emerson had affirmed over radio, pointing at her element. "Three per floor, looking out this way, Harris on me!" The three Rangers had flown down the stairwell as the rest busted out windows, taking firing positions as they vectored their bores down the street. When Bannon and her men had gotten to the lobby the plan was clear. The front of the building on the ground floor had been all glass, and then nothing as Bannon got her breaching hammer from her back only to slam it into the left side, a cascade of broken shards coming to ground as Harris had set up on the receptionist desk, his boots dipping in the blood of Masterson's prior kill.

Behind her men had already been tasked, five Rangers pushing past and into the street, stepping over the body of woman thrown out of the building, her body still draining itself out. Across the street had been a simple hotel, similarly broken into, however there was no time to clear it, the five-man squad simply sweeping the lobby and setting up ground level, covering the opposite firing angle.

Meanwhile Emerson had been radioing reported positions, looking over the map of Tokyo he had on the table.

With their forward positions they had been on the pulse of the entire battle, seeing Romans try to run back from the Palace back to the Gate, only to get cut off by them as they opened fire from a building, they thought clear. This was where the Rangers of the 75th operated best, after all. Emerson had sent the last intel he could before heading downstairs himself, joining Bannon as she set herself up on her own firing position on an overturned table:

"Standby," Emerson said, hopping over, heading back onto the street and feeling the rain hit him again, his own body heat seemingly having dried him off in his absence.

With his eyes he only looked down the hazy street and saw what had been reported: The survivors of the Palace attack, being led by horsemen.

The riders, those Roman riders, their horses had been frenzied: the enemy to their back, and now to their front. It wasn't the roar of screams from the Romans Emerson realized in combat, it had been the Japanese chasing them. They had spotted him and they stopped their run, contemplating what to do with their horses anxiously trotting with so much happening.

Suddenly, Black Hawks above, blowing down upon them all as ropes were thrown from them onto the office building, one helicopter at a time.

The Rangers didn't waver their aim as Marines behind them had rallied.

Pierce had been one of them as he shouldered his M4A2, talking into his radio. "Hitman 1-6, we're on site. Dispense with SAR as needed. Out."

"Stop, god dammit. Stop." The hushed prayer beneath Emerson's breath as he stood in the doorway to the office building, sweat off of his brow as his Rangers had held their own tongues. There was only thing that made sense for them to do, routed like this with them in between their escape. Heroism would have them charge pass them, to try and open up a path to the gate as the choppers above beat an energy none of them had ever seen before.

The Roman riders, taking frantic glances at each other, seeing only a handful of men defending the path, had known what they had to do. It was the only thing they could do in their position; the right thing.

With one screech, the horses kicking up in one war cry, it was followed by the shouts and chants of the riders in full gallop toward the gate. The rest of the routed survivors behind them.

What else was there to be done as Emerson looked across the street at his riflemen, giving them to nod as Bannon dragged him back in behind Harris.

"Engage!"

What was a threat to them nowadays? Mexican narcos? Hadjis? Norks? Sixteen-year olds with AKs and women with grenades? Were they more dangerous than literal Roman legionnaires without an idea of what type of ranged warfare the Rangers, this world, had offered in return? They spoke the language of warfare and there was only but one thing to do:

Kill.

The horses closed the distance fast enough, seeing the Rangers reel back into their firing positions as if they were retreating, so the riders pushed them further, faster, as the mass following of survivors followed.

Chasing them had been the JSDF, wanting to see the very moment that-

The horses and riders entered the cone of fire, and then all hell broke loose.

The sound of a 240 Bravo going full rip had made Emerson regret not asking for hearing protection, the man cringing as he stepped back to the stairwell and went up to the second floor, with guns aimed at chest level he had never seen horses get ripped into ribbons before, never seen them kick off and throw their riders onto the ground as bones were snapped with the impact of them onto concrete. Each crash had been loud, like a car, an undertone of an unending stream of gunfire unceasing as those that tried to get up only had their heads lacerated. The bodies of man and horses piled as they collapsed on the street, pausing the foot soldiers following, but not stopping them outright as they still tried to rush by. The entire office building shook from the small concussive pops of gunfire aimed at the street below, chipping black concrete with blood and bone and impact as bodies kept falling, and kept falling, and kept falling.

This wasn't what warfare looked like.

This was a massacre.

Harris's battle buddy had held his belt of ammo as it fed, his barrel running hot read as he kept it compressed, the cross X of fire offered from the Rangers on the other side absolute as the vibrations of the Cobras doing another pass resounded.

Legionnaires, faces exposed, screamed and screamed as those metal beasts came down onto them like the wyverns they sent upon Tokyo, but no sound could be heard as the sounds of gunfire resounded. The best description Emerson had of that murderous street was as if it was looking at the very skin being torn off a beast with nothing but strength and hands. The way a bandage gets ripped off, but beneath only seeing raw flesh, ground up, turned up, bleeding and full as he had forgotten when he rose his MP5 and fired down into the crowd.

Tens, dozens, perhaps a hundred. Gunned down and down as they tried to reach that Gate on the otherside of the Rangers. But they would find nothing if they could pass: only Romans wizening up, seeing their comrades get cut down and going back into the Gate.

Fish in a barrel: funneled down one way. This was insanity and when the last body fell, it was a mercy. The next people to come into the cone of fire had been allies, finally.

"Watch it riot police and JSDF coming up the rear! Watch your fire!"

The sound of guns being reloaded had been their response. As the Japanese responders had come into contact with the Rangers they had been surprised. American special forces had been deployed ahead of them, and it was as much as a surprise of anything.

The radio had been hot with chatter. _"We're consolidating forces down the street, corralling them into firing positions. They seem lost!"_

_ "Like rats in a maze! Engage as necessary!"_

Behind Emerson had been a tap on his shoulder, he turning and seeing a Marine Colonel. Even in battle a salute was rendered fast, Emerson still looking at the bodies piling up.

"Lieutenant."

"Colonel." The two men regarded each other, looking two different ways.

"My men will establish a forward operating post here and secure that…" He looked out the window with Emerson, seeing that Gate, the armies that once had been below it now gone, back into its belly. "Staging area."

Emerson had nodded simply as he let the Colonel underway, he barking his orders as Marines filled the building and, for the first time today, JSDF, Marines, and Rangers had converged on each other. The JSDF had their own plans though, pushing forward.

The Japanese battle-net had been fired up, cruel, but even then Emerson could pay no heed for it as he thumbed down his radio. "Hitman rally on me. We're pushing to the Gate and then transitioning to SAR. Masterson!"

"Go ahead." The Sergeant responding over comms.

"You're on point!"

The man on the roof had been quick on the trigger, taking his element and scurrying down stairs as the entire Ranger platoon had rallied back with Emerson in the lobby, black armored riot officers passing by as the Marines waved them over to the staging area of it all. Emerson had only followed, stopped by something that had paused them all who store into its maw. He kept trying to look at it, to fully make sense of something that shouldn't be real. All of his Rangers did as well, pausing, heads craned back as its shadow was present in the greying light.

It was the size of a building, the Gate; mocked up in the image of Roman pantheons and monuments of history. A giant archway, but through it had not been the other side as anyone had understood it: Instead there the black. Darker than anything anyone could see. Not a color, but an absence of image. The abyss had been made corporeal, and it stood over them like a mouth waiting to eat them all as it stood before the wreckage of elephants and ballistas and bodies. There was no use avoiding it, there had been so much dead, so much organic material on the concrete there was no use avoiding it. Emerson felt the blood seep through his sneakers.

The enemy came from wherever this Gate led. More could come. Which was why so many Marines had set up firing positions looking into it as every armed individual rushed its perimeter in the middle of the intersection, using the crosswalks as a perimeter guide.

It wasn't their concern though. Masterson had been twisting his head left and right as they got to that same intersection, riot cops around turning over bodies and making sure they had been dead. Finding his bearings, replaying what seemed like days earlier, but instead had been hours, trying to find a route to the convention center that would be best. It gave Emerson time to talk to Pierce again, he personally taking hold of the situation, rain bouncing off of his helmet.

"Sitrep?" Emerson asked.

"Armored is on the way and we're getting more boots ASAP. JGSDF is securing civilian positions. Looks like we're on point for everything." The Marine colonel glanced at the rest of the Rangers, pointing down another street as they began to move. "Who are you looking for?"

"One of my own." Was all Emerson gave him as he dashed off before he was left behind, the pace that Masterson had been setting was desperate. Every second counted, and even here, in a warzone, he didn't care for it as the results of the Japanese cobras engaging had been revealed. Every street cascading out from the Gate had been filled with dead: both Japanese, and then Roman on top of them. They were hikers now, crawling and tripping over the dead as they tried to push that very horror out of their mind. Every single street, every single avenue, not a spot of concrete had been clear. Blood or bodies. At least a hundred, each and every turn.

Dragons and wyverns collapsed on the street with other beasts after being filled with lead all around, the drone of more F-35s above patrolling the airspace with the Cobras.

This was what the end of the world looked like. It was different if it had been Baghdad or Kabul; countries of the third world where the wars that came to them had been subject to modern methods. This was the exact opposite in every measure. So many innocent dead, and yet the Rangers still hoped as they took flight.

The group of Rangers turned the street, only to meet a handful of five Romans huddling beneath a ramen stand's covering. "Stop!" Masterson raised his shotgun, not even sure why he yelled. The Romans had gone from fear to action in just that moment, and five versus 19 hadn't been fair, their bodies contorting before slamming down on the ground.

Again and again this repeated as the Rangers were led to where Masterson had run from originally. To where he had left a man behind. Around them the battle continued on, but for Hitman it was so focused, they had hardly noticed, blazing a path for the sake of a life.

* * *

_"Hitman. Say status?"_ Over the radio Ticonderoga, HQ, had called as they ran.

"Cam." Emerson directed in between breathy pants. The man had answered over his radio.

"Proceeding toward Comiket at this map grid. If you have any spare airborne QRF, please, sir-"

_"On it."_ Command had stated promptly. If helicopters could get there first then that would've been better, but nothing had been perfect that day.

Loke had been a track runner before she joined, the only one able to keep pace with Masterson as he pushed his body that much harder, even as he bled. "Hey, Sergeant, was his family-"

"Yes!"

The pointwoman had widened her eyes as she let her rifle fall loose on her form, breaking out into a run. Those several blocks between them had seemed now so far.

Even with a chopper, Hitman had gotten to the convention center in Ginza at the same time, catching the Marines rappelling in as Masterson side stepped them all, only to throw himself through those glass doors with the rest of Hitman behind him. Their lungs screamed for air, but they had beat it down.

He shouldn't have gone in first.

Insanity of gore. War made cruel and primal and yet… simple, at the same time. The definition of genocide was burned into their minds as Rangers and Marines pushed past glass doors and saw the absolute worst-case scenario. The humidity of the entire center had been amplified as sprinklers above went off, drenching those from above and at their feet as they stepped in and, in the rush of breaching, stopped cold.

"Ah fuck. Jesus _fuck." _Bannon swore beneath her breath, registering what she was seeing. She was stronger than most as they came into that sight: Of absurdity and horror made reality.

Iron, cruel iron that only one man there had been prepared, at all, to see this: the one former police officer. Ramirez had made it the furthest in that group before he stopped. How lucky his career had been that he had never had to come to the scene of a public genocide; a mass shooting.

He was trained for it though, and he had already been to war. Nothing could prepare him for what it looked like when every square inch of the floor had been coated by the vague definition of dead bodies in pieces and whole. Multicolored ensembles of people stained red, their faces morphing into one another; as was how many had been actually dead as sprinkles of water painted them all down as soaked the carpet beneath their bodies.

There must've been hundreds, the absurdity of seeing normal men and women and _children _torn apart, alongside pastel colors of cosplayers and costumed con goers. Displays and booths knocked over and destroyed, extending out into the now impossibly large convention center, the grey light of that rain that came from outside muddying the very sight.

A Marine had puked behind the Rangers as they took it all in. They had to. They couldn't afford to not know what had happened before them as gunfire and fighting behind them raised into a crescendo ending with a deafening silence.

They came as Romans. Completely and utterly.

That smell, Emerson couldn't get it out of his head as he clamped his jaw and took in one putrid breath of death. Please, please God, he begged. He begged that of all the people to survive this, one of his men did. More than that, he begged that if he did die…

"Hitman, say status." Sicario, over the net. "Hitman, say status."

They didn't respond for seconds, lifetimes, as the RTO stuttered and finally responded. There was a quiver in Nutt's voice. "Hitman 1. Report mass casualty event in the Ginza Convention Center. Catastrophic. Over."

The sound of armor clattering down the halls had been heard, Emerson taking the mag out of his gun only to replace it with another full one. This was still a combat situation.

"Tracy!" Masterson had yelled out, not giving a damn in the world about alerting anyone. "Trace! Sarah! Maria! Are you there?!"

His family was also here. _**His family.**_

The second their names had left Masterson's mouth the rest of Hitman had been cognitive of why Masterson had run the way he did. The reason why Emerson had tasked them all on this instead of waiting for more orders.

"Cam!" One of the Hitman yelled out to their sergeant; they didn't know. "They came today?! Here?!"

"It was supposed to be a surprise. God dammit."

Bannon's eyes sunk in as the Marines around them waited for their go, not wanting to step and wade into the sea of bodies before them, wet and still watered above. "Sir?" She called for Emerson.

Emerson felt the ringing in the back of his head, unknowable, unhearable, pressing in on him. "Clear this hall! Let's go! You Marines stay behind us and try to look for survivors."

In truth, it wasn't supposed to be different seeing the bodies of the Japanese lain across on the floor then had been to see dead Iraqi villagers on dirt roads. But it was. This wasn't supposed to happen. This wasn't the world's normal.

Reluctantly, but vindictively, the Marines moved forward behind the Rangers as they moved over the bodies. Romans, pop figures of anime and culture, normal men and women and, dear god, children.

They tried so hard to not look down and try to look for who they were looking for; survivors yes, but this was personal.

The great halls of the convention center had sprinkled with water from its fire system. "Tracy, he pulled the fire alarm when the first slashings happened." Masterson recounted, breathlessly as the day seemed to catch up with him. "He was going to look for his family in the crowd, and, I just- I just-"

Bannon's voice, it was professional, cruel, but it was needed as they all fanned out in a line, weapons up. "Head straight, Sergeant."

He smacked himself with his hand as she said it, wading through the bodies and collapsed booths, the natural light overhead from the expansive glass roof letting in only the grey of clouds.

Hitman spread out still, going on their own as they cleared out the many halls of just the single floor of the convention center, separating out.

It would take more than just two elements of Americans to clear this place, top and bottom. To remain in there would be to just bask in death. Yet they did, they tried, the occasional pop of gunfire from inside the convention center and the collapse of more bodies made it known that they were not alone. Still, asides from that, the white noise of the sprinklers gave way to a silence, and then a sound.

* * *

What did it sound like when a man was begging for his family? The Rangers there might've known it, but not in English. Not until that day as the sound emanated from the convention center's upper floors. Masterson had heard it first, he sprinting, falling out of his hand as Emerson watched him go, watched him run into one hall that had multiple stories to it, like a mall almost. He signaled with his hand to follow, as he called for Hitman over radio their location.

Masterson had flown up the first set of stairs he found, his hearing guiding his run as they came to a bathroom hallway, no doors, just the amplified echoing sobs of a man.

Masterson steeled himself, clenching his jaw as he readied his shotgun, feeling a hand touch his shoulder as if ready to stack and breach. He didn't want to wait, going into the inlet of the male's bathroom and seeing through the ghost ring of his shotgun-

How many dead had he seen today? In those last few minutes? How many had he caused personally?

It was a bigger bathroom meant for venues of that size, massive, but in its back corner had been a single, young man, dusty brown hair, a strong face, coated in red as he sat in a puddle of blood before six bodies. One of them had been one of those pig beasts, and all of them, all of them had been torn apart. With one look at his hands, it might've revealed how it happened, on how one Legionnaire's face was ripped apart and why a jaw had been torn off the pig's, but those hands instead held a little girl.

His little girl.

The man was Tracy O'Neill, and he had been sobbing, his tears lost to the blood on his face as his wife's body lain by his knees.

He rolled his head around and Masterson saw what had been done to him.

Tracy's mouth moved but no sound came out, no intelligible word as he tasted the blood on his face again, taking one of his hands and dipping two fingers into his mouth as if realizing what he was tasting.

"Trace, man, please, stop-" Masterson soon found himself without words as he looked upon one of his men lose so much.

This was how his wife, his beautiful wife, and his darling daughter; his beautiful eleven-year-old daughter met the end of their life:

In a dirty bathroom, scared as beasts and Romans cut them down. They didn't die cleanly. They didn't die well. They died in the worst way possible: with their beloved watching and unable to do anything.

What Tracy did to them in return, it, it-

Cradling the body of his daughter, her head half way cut off, threatened to drop off her neck. He had held it together as blood still ran fresh and her eyes were blank with the expression of pure agony, her long hair clumped with flesh.

Masterson couldn't say it, with all his heart. He couldn't. He couldn't tell him to stop what he was doing as he held the blood and flesh of his baby girl and tried, with all his soul, to put her back together from the slashes and crushing. The cruelty of the Roman Empire come again and given to him.

Tracy did nothing but bury his face in the crook of his daughter's neck, and when he finally did look up at Masterson, his face was painted red fresh as his hands had the skin and flesh of those he had ripped apart limb from limb, beat into a pulp on the bathroom floor.

"Cam-" Emerson had finally entered the bathroom, but said nothing as he was about to ask for status, and only found the worst thing he had ever seen in his life before him, on his knees. "Jesus Christ."

God wasn't there. God was responsible for this it seemed as Tracy looked to his squad lead, then his CO, and then, as the rest of the squad shuffled in, shuffled in, he looked to each of them in the eye as all of the world honed down to just them in that bathroom.

The horrors of war, brought to them, personally. Veterans of wars abroad, of police actions and conflicts and security disputes and liberations. They were dogs of war, and their nose was stuck into violence like never before.

Hitman entirely came into that bathroom one at a time, each not knowing what was happening, and then understanding completely what had been done. They had to bear witness to this.

What happened in that bathroom had happened before, and would happen again; but the now of it: it was repeated a thousand times and a thousand times more in Tokyo. The Japanese had sustained a horror unseen in that world since the times of Christ, and the damage had been biblical in ways that hadn't been felt in the Western world since a September morning, so long ago.

Insanity. Pure and utter insanity. A curse was placed on Hitman that very moment as a man had gone insane.

He raised himself up, like a spectre, holding his daughter in his arms as blood dripped from every bit of him and her, and looked straight ahead, through everyone, and moved forward. Past them, none willing to stop him as they parted like the Red Sea. On his lips the incantations of revenge and retribution cast on every who had heard, and who had seen, what had been done to him and his family.

Wars started in the hearts of men. Of women. Of fathers and mothers. Daughters and sons. What Tracy O'Neill's heart had spoken like a prayer, a desire that he wanted for the rest of his life placed upon Hitman:

"Kill them."

Tracy spoke to a future. To one he would not be a part of and he damned it all on how he couldn't be there when the inevitability came. He spoke to those that he would live on in, and carry out the will of him and all those who lost someone that day.

His voice did not stutter, his gaze did not waver as he looked back, leaving that damned place, leaving Hitman stunned. His last bout of sanity was his most sane, and then the Abyss swallowed him whole.

_**"Kill them all."**_

* * *

_**Manifest Destiny**_

"This unfortunate race, whom we had been taking so much pains to save and to civilize, have by their unexpected desertion and **ferocious barbarities justified extermination** and now await **our decision** on their fate."

President Thomas Jefferson

December 29, 1813

on the **Native American**


	4. 0-4: The Rangers

A/N: wew, been slacking

Also a note, for those of you who are new Manifest Destiny readers, sorry for the long updates, I'm curtailed by other fan and professional projects, so my bad and it's not what you deserve. For you returners, I'm sure you've noticed by now this Manifest Destiny's scope is different. And I can't just straight rewrite Manifest Destiny but better, there's no such thing. The new tone, and the lessons of these last real world five years, are reflected in this new version of Manifest Destiny.

* * *

**0-4**  
**The Rangers**

* * *

At some point Emerson's actual gear had been delivered to him, his plate carrier and proper kit, and he assumed the role truly of Ranger, on the front, at ground zero. He and his men spent over twenty-four hours straight in Ginza, kicking in doors and organizing sterilization of office buildings from the Romans, done without mercy, without misgivings, without a stutter. So many doors, so many bodies, kicked in as they silently became Ginza's special operators on tap.

Men and women, Americans, with thermal vision and night seeing capabilities, peering into the darkening day and reaching out with gunfire.

It was what they needed, after carrying the bodies of the O'Neills to a waiting helicopter, seeing him be flown away, ruined. In truth, Emerson hadn't been in command that night, or General Andrade, or Colonel Pierce, or the responding Japanese General Hazama. The Romans certainly hadn't been in control that night, as they were herded like animals and put down with a vengeance by the JSDF that coated the air with vindication. The rain wouldn't stop, and neither would they.

Who had been in control were the dead.

They were just on autopilot, carrying out the will of those lost.

Their justice, their retribution, begged for as the JSDF opened fire into an enemy that could not fight back. Their bodies had been dragged out into the street, piled into stacks unceremoniously as, besides them in contrast in neat rows: the bodies of those they conquered. Innocent men and women and children, put onto tarps, dead, waiting to be identified as Ginza became a tent city, sprawling out from the Gate itself, surrounded on four sides by tanks, American and Japanese.

The Mutual Defense Agreement had been in full swing, and like all things never enacted before, there were… rough patches.

"You need to disengage your men from this area and let the JSDF handle this!" It was Hazama, in a poncho yelling almost into the face of Colonel Pierce, in his gear as he had been hunched over the command tent in front of the office building that Hitman had taken to earlier that day. It was night now, the stars above gone, and Tokyo's lights still blaring out against the darkness. The city itself had been dead quiet however, so that was why Emerson had caught the argument in earshot as he had picked up more magazines for his rifle, stuffing them into his gear.

He picked up his head, looking, breaking a rule taught at West Point: Keep your head down.

Pierce had been quick on the draw to respond. "Those aren't my orders to give, General! And as far as I'm concerned, we need to be here! We have confirmed American civilian casualties! This is as much our responsibility as it is yours!"

More than just American civilian casualties; a serviceman and his family.

"You have Abrams tanks rolling down our streets, Colonel!" Hazama spoke back, his hand slapping the map on the table Pierce had been hunched over as Major Sevson on the other side of the tent had made a step toward the pair before deciding it'd be in bad faith to intercede. "Is that really necessary?!"

Pierce had glanced outside of the command tent, looking at JGSDF Type-74 tanks hull down in front of the Gate, their cannons staring into their darkness.

"Well we don't know that, do we General? Respectfully take it up with General Andrade, but we're not going anywhere." As he said that Pierce looked up, locking eyes with Emerson. How tired the two men had been, and how much longer they had.

The basements and cellars of those hundreds of buildings in Tokyo were next on the list to be checked, and that meant nightvision. On his helmet the GPNVG-18s, four tubes that would lock down in front of his eyes and give him night vision, had been ready and willing. He would be lying if this didn't feel like old poetry to him, comforting that, even against an ancient enemy, his combat tactics remained the same.

"Ell-Tee." It was Sergeant Bannon, her hoarse voice beckoning him away from the heated aura of the command tent. The Tokyo Metro needed to be cleared and they were on deck with the SAT teams. The Romans had found themselves in every hole in the foreign land, and they had made it their prerogative to hold out, hoping reinforcements would come.

None would.

A few blocks down bodies of Romans had been piling up unceremoniously, piling higher and higher until a new stack had been started. Still not all who had been in there had been dead. One such stack had been shifting asides, unnoticed beneath the rain until the metal clanging of armor moving against each other had been heard, the EMTs and medics checking over the bodies turning over immediately to see a Roman emerge out of the amassing of limbs and heads, his eyes dead, confused, as one of the Tokyo police had only approached him cautiously. He was mistaken for dead and now he wished for it as the office took the man's arms behind his back and cuffed him to the floor, yelling for soldiers to take him away.

Over the noise, the Roman had been uttering an unknown language on his lips weakly, as if calling out names before again he was knocked out: _"Emroy, Hardy? Hardy?"_

* * *

_**2,996**  
Fatalities during the September 11th, 2001 attacks. Several thousand of those exposed to the ash cloud following the collapse have also died due to related illnesses after the attacks._

* * *

For Kristian Emerson, the days following the Battle on Ginza were a blur between rain, blood, and the complete and utter deployment of an entire JGSDF division into downtown Tokyo. The world focused entirely on Tokyo like never before as one of the largest metropolises on Earth became, not only a battlefield, but a host to an impossibility. He never paid much heed in the aftermath: the clamoring of the scientific pundits or speculations on why it was a Roman legion which had arrived at Ginza's door. He had only cared for what he had done, and what had been done to him and his Rangers.

HQ had pulled the Rangers out specifically. JSDF hadn't liked the fact American special forces had been on the ground acting in a forward capacity. What was done had been done though, and the news coming out of Tokyo, from survivors and first-hand witnesses, was that the very first people to fight back had been nothing less than American Rangers. Plain clothed and-

"Right place, at the wrong time." Emerson had recounted off dazed, groggily, nearly a day and a half after the Gate had appeared. For one whole 24-hour period, he and his Rangers had been, for the most part, the tip of the spear in clearing out entire buildings from the Romans. It had been a consequence of coincidence that a good part of Japanese police and JSDF had been occupied dealing with another disaster for the last six months. Fukushima's wasteland appropriately calling for much of the emergency personnel of Japan to it. Six months on and it hadn't been any better, if not entirely known in scope. What had happened in Ginza had seemed as if God himself had ordained to damn the Japanese in the most grotesque fashion.

He spoke in his folding chair in an empty Ops room, usually reserved for briefings and the like amongst his platoon. At some point he had finally gotten out of his ruined civilian clothes, the cloudy, woodland smear of his BDU on now; a design meant for mainland Asia and its urban centers. Who he had spoken too had worn the exact opposite: a white polo and khakis, bags beneath his eyes and a clean shave.

Emerson had seen this man, from time to time on base. Not exactly a spook, but a master of them. He had been of Asian stock, Emerson could tell, perhaps Korean. He had heard the man in passing speak several languages. CIA? JSOC? He wasn't quite in the right state of mind to ask, a brisk handful of hours of sleep keeping him going even now as he ran his hands down his jaw. Emerson had one, of handsome jut, hidden only by the beard that the relaxed grooming standards had allowed him to have, the tighter, curled locks that seemed to come from the top of his groomed hair, as if one cohesive unit. It had made him a touch bit manlier when it first came about, putting on five years on his face to his benefit. He hadn't always been a 2nd Lieutenant, in command, but the beard had helped him fold into the part.

_"Your face grows faster than the rest of you, honey!" _Emerson recounted his Mom saying another version of him, so long ago it felt. It wasn't the hair that made him old, that he knew.

The spook had slid a larger photo of himself and Masterson across the table he had been sitting at, settling into a chair himself.

"Congrats, you're front page on Reddit." The spook spoke, not letting Emerson speak before he had spread out several other images printed: Of Emerson and the Japanese lieutenant standing on the police kiosk, ushering people into the Imperial Palace, of Masterson and Emerson charging in with borrowed gear and borrow guns, into the streets of Tokyo; images taken up and down the last 24 hours of Emerson, and then his men. "Usual hookey bullshit circulating about now. Saying this was some sort of fantastic false flag, because there was no way there was a Ranger who just so happened to be in the area to fight back and give **us **cause to go in. Or that we knew that this was coming so we planted Rangers ahead. Things like that."

All Emerson could do was shrug, head shaking a bit, tongue poking a cheek from the inside. "I wish I wasn't there, sir…?"

The spook loosened his tie, letting out a sigh. "Yeah, me too." Taking one last glance at the photos he had locked eyes with Emerson. "Name's Andrew Blackburn. CIA Station Chief here in Tokyo. Was in Korea before that, well, when there was a Korea. And before that I was JSOC."

Emerson had leaned back, a little perturbed, but he wasn't surprised. He fell under JSOC as a Ranger, and they had rubbed shoulders with enough spooks. Hell, some people would call him one.

Blackburn had glanced at his smartwatch, a notification popping up on it that he had hurriedly ignored, and then another after that, and then another after that.

"Busy?" Emerson questioned.

He grit his teeth in response. "A bit. I just have to confirm the reasons why a certain Ranger group was in Ginza that day, and then explain it upward to the Japanese government."

"That a concern?" Emerson rose a busy eyebrow.

"It is when that Ranger leads his own counter-offensive and not leaving it to the authorities." Emerson had gone to open his mouth but Blackburn had been a bit snappier. "Ain't nothing against you, Lieutenant, if I was in your place, I'd probably do the same, all things considered, but…" Out from Blackburn's back pocket had been a recorder device. "State your name, rank and current assignment."

Emerson blinked several times. Should he have had a lawyer for this?

"Kristian Ridgeway Emerson. 2nd Lieutenant. Current tasking with the Four-Seven-Five, Delta Company, 3rd Platoon."

"So you're a **Ranger**?"

"Yes, sir."

75th Ranger Regiment, 4th Battalion. Emerson had been a new Ranger in a new battalion, the world shifting its needs for the expansion of special forces such as himself. What it meant to be a Ranger in those modern times had been nebulous, ambiguous, but the United States Army needed the premier fast reaction force that it fielded to be as versatile as it needed to be. Regardless of whatever happened to those that made up that force. The Rangers were an old creed amongst the US Military, ushering forth American warfighting by being the tip of the spear. As simply put, a Ranger had been the in-between. The middle child between the GI and the Operator that had their feet in both pools that had been increasingly blurring together. The combination of modern warfighting and then modern special forces techniques.

A lot of his chalk had been new, barely a deployment or two beneath their belts save for his two team leads and Ramirez. Ginza had been the most hectic fighting they had encountered.

"What does that mean to you, Lieutenant?"

Emerson wanted to reel further back in his chair. Awfully deep and retrospective a question for what was otherwise a post-action debrief. He palmed his forehead again, giving off a chuckle. "Seriously, sir?"

"Drop the sir," Blackburn casually followed. "And yeah. Take it how you want."

Emerson had washed the answer around in his mouth a second, playing it over in his head as he poked the inside of his cheek with his tongue. "It just means I'm busy, sir. I get caught up in things that go beyond my clearance to talk about while being recorded."

Good enough, Blackburn nodded a few times. "You like being one?"

Emerson flared his nostrils a bit. "I like living up to the standard, yes… Though not everything about this job I enjoy."

"Been around the block, haven't you? COIN and Low-Intensity operations out in Africa and the Gulf?"

"Can't confirm or deny." Emerson said to the spook.

Blackburn saw the irony in that as he had tapped some fingers against the table.

"What were you doing, in Ginza, Lieutenant Emerson?"

Emerson had asked that same question to himself as he sat on that bench, looking up between the skyscraper canyons of Tokyo and seeing blue sky. What was he doing in Ginza of all places? He'd rather have been back at base catching up with his family, if anything.

"Sergeant Masterson… Cam, we're friends beyond our usual professional etiquette, and so, with some goading, wanted me to go out with him on behalf of Corporal-" Emerson caught himself, a pause to his eyes and throat as if the next word had been a curse. "Tracy." He said once, nodding to himself. "We were going to surprise Tracy by arranging a visit with his family, from back home. They were supposed to meet at some comic book convention or-"

"Comiket." Blackburn rolled off his tongue. "That's what it's called."

"Yeah," Emerson nodded, the name being familiar. "I'm not personally a fan of anime or all that stuff, and I really didn't want to intrude, hovering over Tracy as he met his family, so I, kinda just, stayed behind at Ginza."

Blackburn raised his shoulders once before lowering them, head shaken. "So you were just there, by coincidence?"

Emerson nodded softly. "You can check the logs, my planner even. I've had this written down for weeks." He didn't get to where he was without writing things down, that's for sure.

"Right, well, the main issue of contention, Lieutenant Emerson, was you taking your own initiative and securing weapons and gear onsite, pushing back into the attackers before linking back up with command authority."

Emerson bit down on the inside of his cheek, nodding. "I understand that what I did was outside of the particular… protocols and the rules of engagement for anything like this, but I had my responsibilities to my men. Even off-duty."

"So much so you went through enemy lines for them?"

"I'm a Ranger." Emerson parroted. "Enemy force composition and strength was… extra-ordinary, as I evaluated. And I did establish comms when prompted by HQ. **I had a responsibility.**"

The fact of the matter was to kill these Romans as they came, it had been _easy. _To say it out loud, to say it and declare his combat ability above the enemy in such an empirical and objective measure, it spoke to his mind of arrogance in every other situation. The world over he had been reminded that just because he had been an American, drinking whole milk, eating beef his entire life and trained by the world's most powerful military, did not mean invincibility or the right of might. Anyone could send a mortar down on his firebase, young or old, terrorist or freedom fighter. Anyone could shoot a gun, and that gun did not care for who shot it.

When confronted with the Romans however it was nothing less than right.

It was as if, that day, he existed on a plane far above any of them, and yet, in the most tragic sense, there were still people he got caught below it all, who had suffered their indignities. It was personal.

"You do see that there's a huge problem here, with you taking that responsibility and running with it, yeah?"

"There's a huge problem with there being Romans in downtown Tokyo, that's for sure." There was an edge to Emerson, then and there, the way his chair slightly moved that Blackburn had pegged. How many SOF did he personally know to go through the stages as Emerson did now? The Forever War had been, plain as day, long. Long enough for him to see generations of operators go through this same cycle of burning out, of failure. Emerson caught himself, clenching his teeth. "Sorry, just a lot on my mind."

"Naturally," Blackburn cooly said. "But I'm just here to warn you that if there is an investigation into your conduct then, you shouldn't be surprised."

"Of course." Emerson had agreed. He understood what he had done. He understood it and then every bit after. "But respectfully I think it would've been more negligent of me **to do nothing**."

"By your regard? Or the code and conduct of the US Army?"

Emerson pursed his lips. "Both."

"I don't remember reading that in the handbook." Blackburn looked to his side, snide comment made and all.

"I was not about to leave one of my men behind, and I wasn't about to take any hostility against the innocent laying on my back. **We were engaged**."

"Settle down, meat eater." That combat high was still on Emerson, hanging over him like a cloud. Blackburn had smelt it. "Don't need any more strikes against your record if they come. Whether it be from our circle or the Japs."

"They already on there?"

"No, but let's just get on this break down."

Blackburn had went on, checking off points on the list, making sure that this Emerson had been the one who did indeed walk through Tokyo with an MP5, gunning down Romans and being one of, if not the, first to do so. An exacting after action report, by any other metric. One misstep, even when already presumed that the entire ordeal was a misadventure, would've ended Emerson's career then and there.

Though Emerson knew it, and quite frankly, he didn't care much for it. Things like this, of discipline, of the nature of war, they went above him. God would be his judge.

It took an hour and a half for that debrief to come through, that first few hours of that day up until they had found Tracy replayed as if torture to the lieutenant, but it was needed. Emerson talking back his memory as Blackburn read questions clarifying as such. This wasn't his first debrief. Far from it. Hardly his messiest mission and needing to justify what he had done for it.

Surgical, tactical, precision; words that defined his missions but, in the end, never ended up matching as far as he had known. It was easy to be cynical about it all, as he was being, even today.

All the order of things, from paperwork to confession, it helped justify anything and everything.

"They need to hear it in your words," Blackburn had said, finally thumbing the recorder off after it was done. "From what I heard of you, you weren't going in there, gun blazing for nothing, so this should help."

"Then why is it a CIA Station Chief doing the debrief rather than me regiment?"

Blackburn had only smiled, getting up, hanging outside the door of their room and signaling for someone. "As you were, lieutenant."

Leaving that room he had only bumped shoulders with a man who had been as equally on edge as him. It was Cam Masterson's turn in the hot seat. The least Emerson could do was wait for him.

* * *

_Friends beyond professional etiquette._

Replaying those words in his head Emerson had laughed at himself internally. It was hard to simply say that he had been friends, not after a situation so hot the base was still rumbling with movement of other Rangers from the 4/75 doing what they were called for. It was hard for him, not to go out there and resume formation. The 4/75 had been brought forward into Japan for a very specific reason, not too different than what they were going into Tokyo for. Albeit of all the armies to come into Tokyo, they expected it to be the Chinese.

The deployment of an entire Ranger battalion across Japan had served many purposes that he had understood, most of them playing a political game that Emerson knew too well. Of all the campaigns he had served on, the political ones had been the most fulfilling.

He glanced at his phone, notifications blowing up, and yet nothing he could say.

Not to Mom, or Dad, or John: Emerson's family, worried sick, knowing where he had been.

He had slid the switch to silence his phone, head in hands, leg shaking.

Family.

He had a family.

Not Tracy. Not Anymore.

He had allowed himself one short message, just his luck he had caught the phone not answered and left only this:

_ "I'm okay Mom, don't you worry about me. Stuff got real dicey, but you know me. I'll be fine. Just worry about chemo and all that? Alright? Promise? Love you. Tell Dad and John I'm okay. I'll call again soon."_

The rumbling and yelling from beyond the door had brought Emerson out of his inner thoughts. "Write me up, like I give a shit spook. I did what I needed to do and I'm not justifying it to the asshole who botched North Korea!"Masterson had been a shooter in the forward deployed Rangers longer than most. The shoulders that he had bumped into during his time outweighed Emerson's own, and whatever that meant as he stormed out of the room and left nothing but a slammed door in his wake, yelling all the while.

He was pleasantly surprised to see his lieutenant waiting for him, but it only offered him opportunity to put what he was feeling into words. "Man, can you believe it Kay?"

Fired up, this was how a piece of himself, his true self, came about again. Half disbelief, half sarcasm. His voice, his words, the way he held himself and spoke to people, it had been one of his traits that made him who he was. Loud and proud, hand pointed at that shut door and the man beyond it.

"I am a grown, thirty-year-old, meat eating, red blooded, Anglo-Texan-American! I served my country shooting brown people for years by the infinite wisdom of a Commander in Chief and the Five Star Generals who have done as much irreparable damage to this world as fructose corn syrup. I carried out those orders, and made sure they were reinterpreted best to the greatest common good of our mission, for the last decade of my life. And yet…" He had slammed his fist against the doorway. "Some spook asshole who thinks they can just come in and insert himself into this god forsaken situation a few days late has the gall to tell me, a good ass Ranger, that I might've done something wrong! Fuck you! If my tribe didn't raise me right I woulda just called you a carpet bagging, Uncle Tom, chink to your face!"

Colorful he was as a character, how folksy his accent was that came from Texas itself, it had been as harsh as the man needed to be.

Hands at his hips, Emerson could only pat the man's back twice. "Good Cam?"

The man had been fuming like a bull, daring Blackburn on the other end to move. None came. Even after half a minute, tense as a firefight lull. "Sorry," Masterson said, hushed, beneath his breath. "Don't usually like using the race card but it's uh, the Marines are a bad influence."

As tense a smile he could put on, Emerson gave it to him. "Come on. We gotta get our kits in order if we're being sent back out."

"I'd rather just stay here and lock this spook in this room."

This time the hand on Masterson's shoulder had stayed, forcing him off and away. "If you're gonna rage against the CIA for what they've done, Cam, I have a nice pot I could introduce you to."

In all honestly Emerson had preferred that Masterson not vent the frustrations of the last few days at a CIA Station Chief, of all things. Though this was the first signs of life of a man that had gone cold since Tracy had been restrained and taken away. The man had fought his own platoon, with hands and fists, spreading the blood of his baby amongst them all as he clawed at them to not restrain him and send him away, away from his family. Masterson had held him down and it felt like betrayal; his redemption simple: Kill as many Romans as he could.

So many JSDF and police had acted very much like him, striking out against the Romans as they coward beneath superior firepower, handling them roughly when they did surrender, tossing the dead ungracefully into piles.

There was a story Emerson had recounted, then and there, the two men walking through empty halls of Yokota AFB to the setup area for them: During the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, a lone airman had taken off disobeying orders, shooting down so many attackers with a single machinegun in an outdated plane, only crash landing when he had run out of ammo, fuel, his plane riddled with bullets. The public had cried for him to be decorated when all was said and done, but US Command had seen it differently: it would've awarded dissent and insubordination.

"How's the shoulder man?" Emerson had held the doors out of the admin building out to the tarmac of Yokota, still cloudy, still damp from the rain that had come over them. Masterson had only shaken it once, barely wincing.

"Ain't nothin'." He said, coolly as he could. "Only lightning will take me down, and even then, it's gotta strike twice."

"Is that the official diagnosis, sergeant?"

Masterson snickered. "No, sir."

For a moment a bit of his lighthearted self had returned, but it was buried beneath the furrow of his brow, another flight of F-35s from the Fallujah roaring overhead. A reminder of where they were.

The sound of military jets and choppers had been long familiar to the two men, but here, it felt different, bouncing off the natural sound of a country that had otherwise been a bastion of non-interventionism for the latter half of a century. No country existed in a vacuum however.

"You gonna be alright?" Emerson didn't know exactly how to word anything but the combination of pure, genuine worry and the insinuation that he had to be for the sake of order, but that was the best he had gotten out of his mouth as the two men walked along the buildings of the air base, distant thunder roaring out.

"We've all lost, Kay, this ain't my first rodeo… But shit. I shoulda never left his side."

Emerson sighed out, as strong as Masterson tried to gather himself up. "Don't put that evil on yourself. None of you could've prepared for what happened."

"I shoulda yelled at him at least, to just not go for the fire alarm and just book it with his family," Masterson patted his own cheek, going over to palm his face. "Shit happened so fast."

"I know, Sergeant. I know. But if he didn't, that convention woulda been a lot worse."

It was hard to quantify anything worse when they were all there and the bodies had become the new floor.

"I'll get over it." Emerson doubted that. "Just put me out there again, and I'll be better."

_Put me out there. Let me keep killing._

Everything in that world was about power, the relationship between Rangers like them, and dirt farmers that shot at them? Bridged only by gunfire and a common language of modern warfare, no matter what type: guerilla or traditional. These Romans? They did not exist on that power structure, but were subject to it. It was nothing less than the exertion of justified megalomania; to exert force on someone who deserved it.

"Ain't healthy, you know." The two men turned over to the open mouth of one of the base's hangers.

"This job, ain't healthy, Kay…" Masterson paused everything, even his steps, letting Emerson walk a few steps in front before a few words had breathily came out of him. "Thanks for asking, by the way."

Emerson had made a small smile, an affirming nod. "It's what I'm here for."

A hanger on Yokota had become the staging point for much of the Rangers deployed forward in Japan at the time, inside it not planes, but rather the cages that each operator had found their own gear and workspace in. Not much bigger than a walk-in closet, it was enough, each cage side by side forming a block. Inside each had been the personalized shelves and containers, workbenches, meant for each Ranger to look over and maintain their gear and equipment. An entire company of Rangers had found themselves in cramped quarters of that hanger, over eighty, but Hitman had had their time in the sun, the rest of the company out in Ginza performing their duties as called upon.

A moment of privacy, rare, but the quietness over the hall had been filled with the sorrow, thick with regret.

Emerson had rounded the cage block dedicated to his platoon, and found his Rangers off by one of its corners, half in a school circle, heads held low, unsure of what to do. Nearly twenty men and women, normally loud and proud and glad to be alive, more or less, driven silent by absence. When Emerson rounded the corner his Rangers looked at him. It was time.

"Ell-Tee." Bannon had been the first to open her mouth, her ragged voice dragging, her eyes going back to what they were all looking at:

It was Tracy's cage.

Through the wire of the cage they all saw it; the now morbid reminders of what he didn't have now: laying by his disassembled rifle on his work bench had been a picture of him and his family together in their backyard in Maryland. Tracey, so young, having a family, had a apron that read: "Kiss the Cook!" in all of its cliché glory, his wife hanging onto his shoulders as he tended a grill, his daughter waiting patiently with a paper plate, waiting for the burgers to come out. His daughter's blonde hair glowed brilliantly in the summer sun as his wife's tank top proudly displayed the emblem of the 75th Ranger Battalion.

He was lucky. Far luckier than he deserved, he sometimes told them all.

Of Hitman, only three other members had a family like he did, and he had been the youngest, happiest of them.

Ramirez had been the other, his worn face betraying the indignity that he felt for a fellow family man having been dealt such a rotten card. The oldest man of that group, at forty, he had always been a guide for Tracey on how to maintain a healthy family relationship despite what they did as a profession. All that advice now, had been useless.

Emerson felt for the keys to the cages in his pocket. He as an officer had the masters for his block. Of all the services that they, Hitman, needed to carry out for Tracey, cleaning out his personal effects had been one of them.

"Sir-" Masterson had said quietly, but couldn't hide it, as the two of them approached the caged door in front of Hitman, the group allowing them space. "Let me, open it. He was my direct responsi-"

Emerson didn't need to hear anything more, turning around and gingerly dropping the key into Masterson's palm.

"Thank you."

The Lieutenant could only give a meek smile as Masterson moved to open the door, now he caught in front of Hitman as a whole, pensive, holding back, ashamed. He needed to say something, and he did. "I asked, uh, General Andrade, on whether or not we can get clearance to visit Tracey." The entire group had perked up too soon, not catching his tone, drooping. "The doctors, they won't let us."

"Man, fuck them, we gotta be there for him man." Corporal Harris had been strong with his words. He always was, having the form and fit to back it up, standing tall amongst all the Rangers. The closest thing to a doctor in that group however had seen it the medical professional's way. Hitman had, collectively, called him Doc. Bald by his own choice in the end, he turned over to Harris, baseball cap he wore in hand.

"We'd only make it worse, Brian." As a combat medic, Doc knew best what hard decisions were, and to agree was one of the hardest he'd made. "Being there? We'd do everything he'd ask, we'd send him deeper down."

Hate. There was so much hate brewing in each of them. The feel they had for the innocent alone would've been murderous enough, but the fact that it had happened to one of their own? The very ground beneath them had felt dry, cracked, ready to be stomped down on by each and every one as they felt the drag of darker instincts.

They entered Tracy's cage, the ones closest to him. Ramirez, Loke, Masterson. They saw all that he had brought along to make himself at home in the cage.

"Rest of you," The Hitmen who had stayed, looking in, their eyes had all turned to Emerson as he called for attention. "Break off. Go ready your kits, do something. Being here… No need."

A few silent nods, _yes sirs, _alrights and okays. Emerson had a point as silently his platoon split, most into their own cages as their chain doors rattled and they settled in.

Shelves had been erected in Tracy's cage, more personal effects than anything, framed pictures, report cards and drawings, books that his daughter had sent him to read. They had a set schedule on what to read, together, even an ocean apart. It was so that even thousands of miles away they could look forward to something together. A container of old bay had sat next to a bag of chips, half of it dumped into the snacks on his own volition, that had perhaps been the reason Tracy's AR had been a little greasy around the points of contact. He had been the middle of extending the mag release. He was practicing shooting offhand and having an ambidextrous control would've helped that along. It was Masterson's suggestion.

The sergeant had taken a seat at his chair, before said work desk, picking up an AR wrench. "I'll strip the gun down. Get his personal stuff off of it.

"Right." Loke nodded behind Masterson, palming over a few of those picture frames, stacking them on top of each other as Ramirez had produced a rucksack.

"Stuff that's fragile, put it in his hard case," Ramirez motioned to the footlocker in the corner. "With no gun, there's gonna be space. Rest in here."

This was his first loss like this, and Emerson had felt useless as he stood outside of the cage, looking at the three Rangers wade in the melancholy of a man they thought dead. He wasn't. He had nothing more than a few bruises and cuts, but it had been an act of ignorance to believe those were his only injuries.

What was it like to see a man go insane? A question unanswered until the day they saw Tracy, and how, he had gone from body to body in the convention center, trying to find parts to put his daughter back together. When Hitman tried to stop him, he fought, he fought as hard as he possibly could, and he screamed, and he screamed for death.

It was about time for himself to get squared away, by his own words, letting those who had taken to Tracy's effects do their business, wade through the life of a man that they had called brother.

* * *

_**149 **_

_The amount of countries, around the world, according to figures provided to TomDispatch by U.S. Special Operations Command, where US Special Forces are currently deployed._

* * *

Tracy's cage was stripped bare and down, packaged all nice and tight for transport. Those that had done him the service had nothing more to do than attend to themselves. It was easy, for Masterson and Loke to linger as Ramirez gave one last mournful nod at the empty cage and walked away.

"You look beat, Sarge." Loke had tapped Masterson's elbow, and he agreed, running a hand down his face.

"Who wouldn't?"

The two had walked off back to their cages, settling in, getting squared away by way of their weapons. For Masterson though, Loke's observance hadn't been entirely unfounded, hadn't been relegated only to her. He had heard the familiar boot steps of another woman at the door of his cage.

Lisa Bannon, he had known for a while. RASP, same cohort. A particular moody little number by his count and her own. A wedding ring had been around her finger but it hadn't meant what people thought; that was the point.

_"I'm divorced." _She said one night, to him, about four tours and a few years after the two had the whiff of each other after RASP. _"'bout a week before I enlisted."_

"_Any particular reason for it?" He gestured at the ring._

_ "So idiots like you can ask about it."_

Her voice had been raw, beat down, like sand paper had gone down her throat and never healed. It always sounded like she was yelling, even when she talked, but at her speaking voice it simply sounded like she had whisper-rasping. It reminded Masterson of his Dad, in a way, how smoker's lung had done him a number.

She had tipped her head at him as he turned around, and he nodded, inviting her in. She had been more than comfortable in this space with him, and vice versa.

"You." She wags a finger at him as she takes atop one of his hardcases, sitting down and settling in. "I want to know if you're okay."

Masterson is a classically trained shooter. On his uniform, the Velcro along his shoulder holds the flag of nothing less than Texas. Guns had been his culture, so he knew and picked his well, in a unit that had offered him the liberty to choose his exacting specifications he had done so. He had an old carbine that had been perhaps not the latest and greatest, but it had been the standard configuration for gunfighters like him for the last decade. He had clacked it together, pushing the body pins back as he loaded a practice mag, making sure it cycled with a dummy round well enough. Bannon had allowed his silence as he did it.

He knew he was being obtuse, but it was lunacy for him to not submit, to deny himself the feeling of failure. With a placative look he had taken the rifle in one hand in his swivel chair, handing it over to the woman. "I'm a ways away from okay, darlin'."

Corporal Donald Nutt had been in the cage to Masterson's right, the second that last word came out of his mouth he had taken his own leave. He knew the deal. The two sergeants needed privacy, as messy as it was. The grenadier had knocked against the shared wall though, vibrating the chains. "Got some whiskey, stashed by my forty mike, it's there if you need it Sergeants."

"I didn't hear that." Bannon had grimaced, taking Masterson's M4 into her lap after sighting it down to the floor for curiosity. He had switched out for a shortdot recently, his backup ironsights canted at 45 degrees. Always toying with his guns, he had been. She had been otherwise just reading. As long as her own guns shot straight, it was good enough. It wasn't as if the other fireteam lead in Hitman hadn't been taking it upon himself to maintain her weapon for her.

"Might take Don up on that." Masterson thumbed back, rolling his head on his shoulders. "Don't tell me drinking wouldn't help us make sense of this all."

He had shuffled, and for a moment Bannon had thought him moving to go actually get the bottle offered, however a hand had stopped him, holding his wrist and squeezing once, telling him to stay.

On the other side of Masterson's cage had been Corporal Loke. She hadn't been too exacting on letting the two fireteam leads have their guilty privacy as she spoke over the thin barrier of the chains, she going through her own rifle's maintenance. "Cameron," as was how casual Loke had been, "I'd rather you canoodle with Lisa than take to the drink right now…" Distantly Loke had turned, her back had been toward the open hanger door, allowing them all a look out to a very busy military base. "We're at war, don't you know?" Her Michigan accent broke through, perhaps unexpected from a Pakistani-American.

Loke had taken her Mk18, giving it a rack herself before going to her pistol and sighting down the RMR.

"This what you call war?" Bannon gestured her shoulder out the hanger doors.

"Look more like war than Afghan." Loke had said back, going back to working on her guns, the white noise of metal tools on aluminum and titanium going on.

One of the oldest questions of the American modern mythos had tumbled out of Masterson's mouth as he locked his blue eyes with Bannon's greens. "You remember, where you were, during 9/11?"

Bannon made a thin line with her mouth. "We were both kids, you know that. Probably school or sum' shit."

"Well yeah, we was too young to know the feeling of it, but… I always imagined it, early on." He went on, reflective. "What it feel for something to be so impersonal to myself, but so important to the reason I'm even here."

His hand had cupped his own chin and mouth, mumbling as Bannon rose an eyebrow. "You got that feeling now?"

"Me and about million other people now, in this nation." Masterson pointed down at the floor below them. "Something's gotta happen, and I want to be out there."

"Slippery slope, hun'."

"Darlin', you know it ain't our choice. Best I can do is just go for it."

Darlin', hun'. Hints to many things. They told the story of a man and woman from America's West. One from Texas, the other Montana. Bannon's voice, given its gravel, had hid her accent, but Masterson had more than compensated as he held his rifle back, tight, using zip ties to thread his flashlight's pressure pad to its rail.

It was a hint toward familiarity, about who these two adults had been in light of where they were.

It was a hint toward what was happening now: the downtime after the opening shots of a war, one they specifically had been the first ones out on.

Most of all though, it was a hint toward an affection.

Forbidden not in the dramatic sense, but in the professional nature of it. They both knew better, and how it happened over time? An accident. Though that was how it worked, after all.

Quiet moments they were allowed, with Emerson not looking or just ignoring outright, had been rare, and when they were needed, they were denied. Now, today, with a dead family on his shoulders, it was needed.

She had reached out once, again seizing Masterson's hand for a fleeting second, running her thumb over his knuckles and he squeezing back in turn. The two had turned away from each other in it, knowing of the improprieties, their gall, in even doing something like that there in broad daylight. It was their coping mechanism for that long day as, after their moment, Bannon had stood and walked off, leaving Masterson to rest.

* * *

Less than a week, that's all it took for the Japanese Diet to congregate and put together a statement.

Ginza had been secured: Downtown Tokyo had been turned into an entire militarized zone, JSDF and Police constantly combing over every single crack that a Roman or one of their beasts could hide. The JSDF came, and they had broken down Tokyo to its core, turning up buildings themselves as they searched for the villains, the enemy, and as they came to be known as: Terrorists.

Though terrorist was only a convenient word. One mired in the language of diplomatic chemistry and the state of warfare as it was in the world as they understood it. Terrorism held its connotation: unnecessary, to force upon innocent people.

The Japanese Diet, and by way of its Speaker of their House of Representative had declared this:

"We shall authorize the deployment of the JSDF!"

The TV that had been on told the tale of a nation wanting retribution, justice.

It was turned off in short order as Hitman sat alone in the briefing room of Yokota as dedicated to them. Them and the rest of Delta Company. Nearly one hundred Rangers, fresh out of patrolling Ginza, had folded their arms in or leaned back into chairs, looking down on their Company CO as he looked at a piece of paper and then the projector image behind him in that darkened room.

This was the image that hadn't been shown to the public:

"Mediterranean." The Company CO had said at once, thumbing back at the grainy images from a drone borrowed from the JSA and sent through the Gate underneath the cover of night and a giant tent arising over it.

That massive Roman Gate had been covered up immediately, JSDF scaling it, drafting a cloak on it in the meantime to cover both it and its defenses inward. In that secrecy the first work was done.

Preliminary records of what had laid on the other side were shown through cameras meant for Mars and the Moon:

"Ladies and gentlemen, what we are looking at is the surface of what is, quintessentially, an extraterrestrial planet. Of all the questions that have come up in this last week, we have an answer to one: We are not alone in the universe."

It was odd, the implications that this Gate provided a pathway to a _somewhere _else that hosted life. Life that also so, so similarly mirrored Earthen fauna and fairytales.

The video footage told the story of a fairytale: of a quaint landscape as seen from what was obviously a raised position. The camera mounted onto the rover that was sent through had revealed these details:

At first it had taken several hours to go through the Gate and its blackness, even casual attempts to step into the dark revealing nothing but a firm blackness, reality turned into the void with only a glimmer of light toward the opposite end. Through that end in a burst of light was another world. At the other end had been a Gate, much like the one that had stood in the middle of Ginza, and much like Ginza, there had been Romans there. The grainy resolution of the video camera could only speak to the hordes of Romans and what other life there was giving the immediate area around the Gate, down the hill that it sat, a wide berth. Was it of caution? The smoke from war fires and the flight of dragons had fluttered about. Blue sky above, clouds, breathable air. Legions and legions.

"This is some time travel shit." One of the Hitmen had muttered to some muted agreement.

Time travel, space travel, dimensional travel, maybe. Though what was the point on even finding out what had been what? To many there, their Middle East had been brought back to the stone age by their hand. The US Military was a time travel machine in a way with how it regressed so many people, Emerson had given thought as took in those images. How much further in time could they send these Romans?

"These images," The CO started. "Are current as of eight hours ago. This same recon drone is still beaming images. From what we can tell the _Enemy_ has formed a perimeter around their insertion point, anticipating reprisal from us."

"Then why ain't we thanking them for their troubles?" Masterson grumbled up front.

The CO had thumbed to the TV in the room and held up another paper. "That speech their Speaker gave was premeditated." Said speech was in his hand. "And trust me, you want to hear it from me."

A few of the older Rangers who had known this CO tucked in, it was very odd for him to have been as reserved as he was as he put on his glasses to better read it again, starting slow. "Under current Japanese legislation, and in compliance to International Law, Japan shall not engage in an escalating international conflict." Eyes had gone dry, brows shifting. "That is why in the course of these events, no matter how unreasonable, the land beyond the Gate shall be considered a part of Domestic Japan. The perpetrators of the attack on Ginza are nothing more, or less, than terrorists. Criminals." Those were the COs words: plain English.

The bodies, the uniforms, the order of battle lines and formations. The proposition that Japan had declared that these had been terrorists. In a more decent world, some of the Rangers there thought, terrorists didn't wear uniforms; weren't part of standing armies. The world they had lived in hadn't been decent though. Still, on its face, it was a ploy. They were an army. An army of a standing nation, unknown to the world. They could not be treated as criminals. They were not, as many of those in that room had known, as Hitman had known uniquely, shot at like common criminals. They were warfighters, and to degrade their enemy into no less than illegal… It felt wrong in a way.

Emerson saw through the meat of it, cut into the heart of the matter. "So we have little recourse." We. The American Military.

The CO had blinked a few moments in the dim room as his Rangers riled up, realizing what Emerson meant. Even with the Mutual Defense Agreement, US Military matters in Japan hadn't extended to that "civil" sphere of law and law-keeping.

"The language of this declaration which is happening now," The CO explained tiredly. "Mirrors certain language as employed in our own War Powers Act. It basically gives Japan its blank check, despite the JSDF's own imposed limits. The fact that they were in Korea has weakened their checks and balances."

Masterson's blue eyes reflected the sky of the image before him. "Then where do we stand, sir? Why we lookin' at this place?"

The CO tightened up, spoken to by Masterson. How personal this went for him, the CO had put aside his rank as captain and spoken to him, like a man. "We're Rangers, Sergeant Masterson. Our tasking here in Japan as of current is of, pushing past the placating language, a fast response to the PRC should open warfare come to pass. However, it is our responsibility, therefore, to act in recognition to further threats in this region. Given that Delta Company has personally sustained losses…" he trailed off, seeing Hitman almost glow in the dark. Personal. That word, for as professional as they were, was inevitable. "Command is looking to see if the Japanese will let us play ball."

An implication: "They aren't already?" Doc had been one of Hitman's smarter members. Went to medical school once, became everything short of a practicing doctor. Cancer had come first, ripped out his heart, showed him how much he had to lose. That matter of introspection to save other people in their most dire had, somehow, culminated in finding his way into the military and Ranger.

"We'd be, according to this language," the CO had seemed pained to say, "Performing COIN on Japanese soil."

"Well it ain't." Doc said again. "They have no international recognition of it. To just broadly claim another world, whatever is beyond there, as Japanese?"

"It's Imperial." Emerson had said once, almost as if a period. "It would contend against any local powers that do legitimately claim territory beyond this Gate."

"Well, lieutenant," the CO said to his youngest officer. "I don't think territory claims are exactly to be respected when it comes to responding to American casualties. To be fair, I don't think Japan will do any such thing. Not with what's happened to them."

Justice, what was right, and what was due. What was due to Delta Company? To Hitman in particular for having lost what they had? Was that at all equal to the Japanese who had lost people that day? Questions that contended with objective fact.

"We have a final count on casualties?" Loke had asked gently.

The CO had winced. "Upwards of eight thousand civilians."

"Internationals?"

"Twelve Americans," He started. "One Hungarian, two Italians, four Brits and a Frenchman. Senegal claims to be missing two children as well in the attack but those aren't confirmed. A lot of embassies are reporting missing but there are a lot of nooks and crannies that all forces involved have to go digging through."

Masterson had almost regretted asking, but it had been involuntary. "And the Romans?"

The CO had answered more concretely. "Eighty-thousand at highest."

**Eighty-thousand dead.**

When men had stood in lines, bullets tended to amplify in their output. This type of warfare was outdated for a reason, and its lesson had never been taught to the Romans until that day. To think of that many people, that many bodies being piled up on top of Tokyo streets? It was insanity. And yet the JSDF had carved a path through its own streets and buildings, and the enemy had met them the only way they knew how: like pigs to the slaughter. The sum total of the entire Japanese losses of the Invasion of Okinawa in World War 2 had been brought to bear in the span of 24 hours in the heart of Tokyo, and the bodies that had piled up had been becoming a problem altogether.

Unfortunately, for Japan, dealing with hazmat and biohazard risks had been its norm recently.

Every body, every corpse, had had its picture taken, and then burnt, a case file assigned and what personal effects found packaged up neatly into a cold warehouse for further examination by a historical and scientific society faced with the same fact as the Rangers: the Roman Empire, in some form, had come to the Modern World.

"Is that an equal give and take?" A Ranger asked quietly, contending with the number.

No one answered.

* * *

_**654,965**_

_The number of Iraqi deaths stemming from the invasion from Iraq, from March 2003 to June 2006. _

_From Mortality after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: a cross-sectional cluster sample survey via The Lancet_

* * *

Several days later.

Again, rain, or, at least, the mugginess beforehand. As of late, the average Japanese civilian didn't spend much time outside when it rained: the fears of radioactive contamination, actual nuclear rain, perhaps overblown, but a present fear. It was why the Rangers, as they flew above a portion of outer Tokyo, were surprised to see so many out and about, even if some had been there without choice.

Hitman as a whole had been dropped off by chopper, dressed down, for all intents and purposes. Plate carriers, at least, but no rucks or bags. It was decidedly casual but outright combat hadn't been what they were there for today, even when all of them had their duty weapons still slung over their chests. The two choppers required to bring Hitman anywhere had dusted off as soon as they had disembarked.

Where they had gone had been the nexus of two disasters.

Japan had had its rough share that year: between a tsunami, a nuclear disaster which dredged up the last one, and a military incursion into Tokyo. It had only meant that there had been something in place, something to use, for when the Romans came.

Displacement Camp 1A had been the largest refugee camp within Japan, erected overnight in the frame of a supermall to be on the edge of Tokyo. Calamity had come first however, and the government had taken over the large plot in order to help organize and give those who had no family outside of the Fukushima Prefecture a place to stay as the disaster relief went on.

Emerson had been to the prefecture, taken helicopter rides further north as the nuclear sludge had been taken back out to see and deposited along an impossibly big coastline. The dead, man and animal, had been thrown about beaches dotted with debris. Every single moment the JSDF had been enthralled in merely collecting the dead and dealing with the worst of it, picking up, tearing the skin itself from Japan as it uprooted anything touched by radiation. Helicopters had been around the clock, even before Ginza, sending more men and material into Fukushima and into the devastated zones.

At least there, in 1A, it had been where a great deal many people were housed, having escaped the nuclear apocalypse. Japan as a people had never been more unified as they had been in that last decade, between the rise of a Chinese power and the faltering of an American one, so rooms were made, hosts had volunteered, and those without a home in Japan after the disaster had been welcomed in by those who had offered.

It hadn't been more than four months since the tsunami and earthquake which had opened up the dark heart of Fukushima, and the last stragglers of 1A had been moved on in place of a different population:

A Roman one.

What had once been a refugee camp, the massive, multi-story parking lot which had surrounded a central mall flat and filled in with fenced sections of tents and prefab buildings, had now turned into a prison. A perimeter had been established around the mall, Japanese people screaming for the heads of these Roman soldiers in an unknown land had resounded even above the beat of helicopters. The survivors of the army had all been marched to here on short-notice, stripped of their weaponry and arms, and told to sit tight beneath the guard of the JSDF.

There had been a helicopter pad on top of the mall building, offering Hitman a look down, bumping shoulders with some of the posted MPs, down onto the fenced courtyards that had been made from the parking spaces. Like the war prisoner camps of another world war, Romans, dazed and confused, tired and scared, had all huddled by each other or had been in tents, not knowing what had been happening.

This had been no charade, no trick; these were men out of time. More than men, even, pigs and tauros, canid and feline verities of bipedal humanoids, even avian. All of them had served, undeniably, a legion.

Emerson adjusted his sling as he peered over the roof, down as Hitman also took that look of curiosity. "Helluva a group." Masterson remarked.

"2,000 and counting." Emerson reported back. Meetings between the officers of the 4/75 had been tense in Japan now. Emerson had been a dark horse, having been the only one who had gone to fight at first as the rest played second fiddle.

_Rangers lead the way, _after all.

Ryan Valentine, marksman, with his keen eyes had look down on them all as a man with his type of rifle did. M110A2. Dressed up as was befit for him: the net-like paintjob intermittent above a black body. He didn't need a scope to see the one Roman that looked up at the Rangers in turn. How easy it would've been to just turn his rifle over, to aim down, to put the crosshairs right on his head and then-

Valentine had a child on the way, a wife waiting for him, back home, in Seattle. He felt for Tracy in ways he never thought possible: to think of losing his family, before his very eyes, the rage he felt had been the best he had ever felt. The way his brown hair blew was the only feeling he had as he looked down and locked eyes with that Roman.

They didn't look any different from him: White, twenty-something. Stripped of their armor, left with only thin and simple under layers that they had, their fabric had been of the ancient variety. It felt, to many of the Hitmen, what perhaps the set of a fantasy TV show looked like.

"You ever watch Game of Thrones?" Doc had nudged Valentine with his elbow.

Valentine shook his head, his eyes and voice dull. "I was like, 5 when it came out man."

Doc had patted the back of his SCAR-L. "Always wondered what it was going to be life, if, like, there were guns in Westeros." He said with some dry morbidity.

The answer had been before them, looking down.

Emerson had seen, more and more, Romans down there had looked up at them and he felt it: The Judgement. It rose the hairs on the back of his head, feeling the raw energy of knowing what the enemy looked like. "Alright, let's go. We got a briefing to get to and we're already in enough shit."

Emerson had drawn his Ranger Chalk away into what had been the mall, turned operations center, the stark white hallways and stairways of what was to be commerce on a massive degree sickly in a way as suit and ties rubbed shoulders with armed men. The JSDF and the US Military, operating side by side in a tense arrangement. The tension had been there: of both sides feeling they were being held back by each other.

One had seen revenge clearly, a goal: The other had been down that path before.

The lower levels of the mall had been used as prisoner occupancy as well, leaving the American and JSDF MPs on the walkways above, looking down. Hitman still looked down as they entered the mall proper, their boots in unison, guns uneasily slung, as they walked to where they were expected.

In what had used to be the mall's planned food court instead had lain the American situation center.

They had seen him coming in, in a way, the tanks posted and the LAVs around, alongside the unmistakable formations of Marines on guard. Colonel Pierce had crossed his arms, kitted out like a rifleman as he stood before a white board with General Andrade. The two men had glanced over as Emerson.

General Andrade was a friend to Emerson. The General, older as he was, still made attempts to reach out to the bottom rung of his command structure, especially those in the 4/75. It was Emerson's particular concentration in his own interest that had made Andrade take note of the young man.

_"Army must be running out of people if you're a lieutenant, Emerson." Andrade had spoken to Emerson frankly one day during inspections. The general had taken some time to do so personally._

_ "It's not my failure, sir." Emerson had responded._

There was a certain self-loathing in Emerson. On his face, one could mistake it for professionalism. Though even away from the eyes of his command, away from his job, there was a certain dreariness that Emerson existed in perpetually. He was a good soldier, and a good man, and those had been, as observed by himself, dialectically opposed. He lived in contradiction upon contradiction, and he had been much too self-aware of it. He was liable to call himself stuck up for it, but there had been no time for that.

Hitman had rendered salute to the General as Colonel Pierce stood, arms akimbo, regarding them and then the general tactical map on a whiteboard, written in English. Every once and a while a Japanese liaison officer would stop by, leaving notices or communications on one of the many set up tables, but largely the JSDF had left the Americans alone.

Colonel Pierce had been something of a celebrity, whether he had liked it or not.

Medal of Honor recipients such as himself had hardly been on the frontline still, but he was due his choice of assignment, so he chose the one that brought him back to the Pacific. That was what his heart told him to do.

Once, what seemed like so long ago with a nuclear disaster in between, North Korea and South Korea had thrown themselves at each other, one last time. It hadn't been an instigation by the US, or a provocation by South Korea. Of all the plans and undoubted thousands of trials meant to collapse the North Korean state and turn it to the West, what had happened had been no less than a superbug.

Sickness had wracked through a country particularly disadvantaged to deal with an outbreak. South Korea had denied aid and what aid China or Russia offered had been intercepted and stymied by international responses. There was nothing humane about what had happened but the eventual collapse. Like an infected cyst however, North Korea had nothing left to do but explode outward in one last revenge against the world for over half a century of pain.

Artillery fell on Seoul on the magnitude seen only in World Wars. China intervened by invading its northern border, containing the outpouring of refugees and attacks.

The Southern Front had been nothing less than the continuation of the Korean War outright.

Caught behind the North Korean frontline with a company of men, Adrian Pierce had led his Marines to a North Korean firebase, silencing guns that had been shelling urban areas of South Korea and holding out against a torrent of North Koreans.

What he had lost that day, physically, had been his teeth: A North Korean bashing his face in with a shovel before his attacker had been killed.

Though like all things, the damage went deeper. The reason why Pierce had led the 7th now was because his last unit was destroyed, and because of those circumstances, Pierce had understood loss. Pierce had looked at Hitman, at Emerson, at Masterson, and all the pretenses of pompous or believed branch rivalries had melted away into pure pragmatic organization.

"Take a seat, Rangers. Sorry about the mess, but uh, we've had to be really up close and personal with what we've been doing." He spoke like a man from the Midwest, humbled and familiar.

The echoes and reverb of a mall, like so many of the empty, abandoned ones in America's Midwest, had been haunting, albeit sprinkled with the sound of footsteps from guards and Romans. One such MP had walked along with a German shepherd, its paws against ceramic tiles.

A dark-skinned Ranger, darker than Emerson, head bald and pursing his lips had made a comment, glancing at the dog. "It's a shame Khan didn't get into the action." His deep, low voice mentioned.

Khan had been the name of Hitman's dog, still kept on base at Yokota. It would've been inadvisable to have brought him out to Ginza that day. The beast of a dog, meant for special forces work, wasn't intended for the pure combat that they experienced.

Andrade had nodded. "Animals in general haven't been that useful. The surviving pigmen and orcs that we have accrued just scare them off."

Right. Hitman collectively blinked to themselves in remembrance. Yes, there had been those anthropomorphic beasts that stood on two legs. A pig had ripped apart of the O'Neills.

Hitman returned a favor dozens of times over the following hours and fights.

"Now," Andrade started, gesturing at the Ranger group. "You're here for a reason today regarding the US's official response to the emergence of this foreign enemy on Japanese territory."

"We have a way?" Emerson asked, remembering just recently as the international death totals came in. America and China had been highest on the list, and every country that had sustained the death of their nationals had clamored for a response, for the deployment of troops. China had been the most aggressive, having already put together a congregation and deployment of troops, just awaiting the Japanese go-ahead. That was the miracle of a one-party system, Emerson had cynically thought. Then again if all people had been as efficient as that, as righteous as the Chinese as of late, they would've been charging into that gate the moment they returned to it.

Andrade nodded. "The UN and about a small army of ambassadors have been giving the Japanese pressure and have offered an ultimatum: Acquiesce to international supervision or face immediate sanctions and legal actions abroad."

"Was that it?"

"Well, surprisingly, no. They fought back, stating internal security measures and Japanese sovereignty were not to be questioned in matters of domestic affairs, as they have claimed, however since the US Military maintains cause by way of the mutual defense agreement, we have become the international supervision by way of compromise."

It was certainly a thought: the world giving America its graces to perform on behalf of them. Then again what was America but the pointman in affairs most anomalous?

"Sounds like expectations." A Ranger rattled off.

Andrade's eyes had gone from the Ranger group down to his notes and mission brief. Still unsure, knowing that there was a point to all this. "It's real messy so far, but the Japanese aren't gonna like what we're gonna put down." A few of the Hitmen shifted, the foley of rifles shuffling against their forms unkind. They were already halfway through this deployment into Japan and the idea of it being extended? It didn't sound too hot to any of them, but nothing had been simple in that last week. "The Japanese government is gonna put a force limit on what we can contribute to this…" Andrade took a glance at the communications sent to him, "_Special Task Force."_

"Special task force? Sir?" Bannon asked further.

"A military contingent head by the JSDF meant for a tactical expedition into the Gate for the express purpose of dealing with the security threat."

"How big?" Emerson had been more pointed about it. Details oriented. Details saved lives.

"Division strength on their end." Andrade answered, glancing to Pierce and affirming it really was him standing there.

"Not like we need much anyway, sir." Bannon spoke up again, and the General nodded.

"Yes ma'am." He affirmed. "But for what we will bring over, **Hitman will be a part of it**."

Masterson gripped his arms a bit harder, crossing them, his jaw locked tight. Throughout Hitman, a wave of tension taken in, dealt with. In the minds of each man and women they tried to decide how to feel. Some were vindicated, ready for a real combat deployment, to avenge Tracey. Some were apprehensive, the idea of being even further deployed uneasy. Uneasy in the way during Ranger training that they had thrown themselves into a pool with bound arms and legs and told to break out.

"Hitman as a whole, and as part of the larger element?" Emerson had seen the particular language used as Andrade nodded again, looking over to Pierce.

"Hitman, you'll be tasked to the 7th MEU as our Special Missions Unit beneath JSOC. You'll be a forward deployed when we get past this gate and act as a recon force that reports directly to General Andrade and his headquarters. Otherwise we'll provide support when warranted."

Just the MEU? Emerson had rose an eyebrow. "Sir, surely this…" Emerson searched for a word other than invasion, "Operation calls for more than just one MEU."

Andrade soured. "It's all we're able to get over."

A little over 2000 men and women, Marine and Navy elements included. Aviation, Armored, Mechanized, logistics, and anything that filled in between, all neatly wrapped up in what the US DoD had called the Marine Expeditionary Units. Fast response forces not unlike the Rangers in a way, but obviously more conventional in nature. These were the forces that, if China had invaded, were to either press the assault forward first and hope that the main battalions would file in to support afterwards. Self-contained was a word to use them.

A microcosm of the Marines.

It sounded like a lot, but compared to a division of the JSDF? They had earmarked 10,000 or so personnel. A sizable portion of the active JSDF outright.

"Sound like something more for the Snake Eaters back at Bragg." Bannon had the repertoire of the other Army SOF units on her mind. "We're Rangers, this wasn't our work back in the Sand Box."

It was the word of the Green Berets more what was being hinted at.

General Andrade nodded again. "In my time dealing with SOCOM, yes, that is correct. But Lieutenant Emerson and Sergeant Masterson have dealt you this card."

Hitman turned over to the men in question, Masterson furrowing his eyebrows, shoulders shrugged. "Hell did I do?"

"Nothing, Sergeant." Andrade went on. "But the Japanese know that you two were the first American responders that day, and so they know you. You're familiar. You are already engaged in such a way that the rest of the 4/75 isn't. That the Japanese is comfortable with."

Pierce had spoken now, as fathers to their men do. "This is what we get for being first on the trigger. Suddenly we're experts in medieval warfare."

"Classical, sir."

Pierce had looked at Emerson as he made the comment, Hitman as a whole shrinking as their book smart lieutenant had to open his mouth. It was a collective groan, but one in good faith. Emerson was a West Point graduate surely, with all the temperance of a man more set for Yale.

"Huh?"

"Medieval is post-Roman. The Classical era is what we consider the period when the Roman Empire was in power."

A beat, Pierce and Andrade looking at each other a moment. Emerson was almost embarrassingly a bookworm by any other measure, though it was endearing.

"Hm. Noted." Pierce had nodded, moving on.

Footsteps from out of view, office shoes, office shirt, a man who dressed like he did when surrounded by Romans and Marines had been a man of note: It was Blackburn again, a folder of papers in his arms as he had walked up. "General, Colonel." He greeted before turning to Hitman. Masterson grimaced and Blackburn had similarly done so. "Hitman."

Pierce had been a little more cognizant of this man. "Andrew."

Survivors of the initial North Korean charge across the DMZ into Seoul had sustained respect across each other. That was, at the very least, what Pierce had for the spook.

Blackburn had placed his folder against the table before crossing his arms, looking over at the Ranger group and taking a breath.

"My name is Andrew Blackburn, I'm the CIA Station Chief for Japan, and, given the situation, I'm being transferred. Same as all you."

"We falling under you now?" Masterson crossed his arms himself, chin tipped.

Blackburn nodded. "Trust me, I'm as thrilled as you about this, Sergeant Masterson, however…" Blackburn ran a hand down his face, dragging out the bags beneath his eyes. "Long story short we're all acting outside of ourselves. White House and the Director want the closest touch they can on this pulse, and we're it. Due to my work history I'll be your handler for your deployment into this **Special Region**." He expected the Rangers to say something, to react, but none did. "How many of you have been tasked with Yankee-White mission deployments before?"

One man raised his hand: Ramirez. In Blackburn's recollection: He was the _Bin Laden_ Ranger.

Blackburn had blinked a few times. These really were new Rangers. "Well, alright. This deployment will fall under that purview."

The oldest Ranger of Hitman had puffed his cheeks before nodding to confirm. Ramirez was among a handful of people to see Bin Laden's body as SEAL Team 6 had carted him onboard the Chinook that was their ride out. A detachment of 75th Rangers had been on hand for Neptune Spear just in case the operation had gotten hot and the SEALs needed a highly kinetic extract from what was essentially Pakistan's West Point.

Ramirez asked in his older gruff. "We have an HVT this time? Hell do we even know their names?"

The bustle and murmuring of the prisoners had persisted, but when asked about, their sounds had filled their ears subconsciously.

Blackburn had sniffled before considering his answer: "We're working on it. It's really hard to do intel work when we have a completely new language to parse through." Though that had arisen another comment. "Now according to your rep sheet, I believe one of you is actually a trained 'terp?"

Hitman had turned over. Eighteen sets of eyes on one woman.

As far as new Ranger combat doctrine goes, the Weapons portion of a typical platoon had been a highly specialized section of hurt. Mortars, snipers, light machine guns, and generally most of the AT fielded on their shoulders. The Ranger that they had all looked at had been a part of Masterson's charge then: She was a sniper. **Specifically,** a sniper, even when compared to Hitman's marksmen with their DMRs: Barbara Annel.

"Specialist?" Emerson asked for her.

She was Hitman's largest woman. Full and stocky, a considerable bulk on her that betrayed her role in the platoon. Her curly red hair had been, as was regulation, tied back and short. Chewing on gum as she usually was, she had taken it out and rested it in her hand to speak.

"Talk to me, spook, what're we dealing with so far?" New Englander as she was she didn't have a kind tone in her voice.

Blackburn opened his folder. "We're seeing a lot of similarities with the Romanic languages, interspun with something that is suspiciously Latin in nature. Currently we're referring it as Lingua Franca, and by that measure, you're all going to have to be somewhat proficient in it."

"The entire Special Task Force?"

Blackburn had smiled once. "Well, you're Special Forces, so you especially. I don't think the JSDF could get a Division-amount of men ready if they tried."

Hitman had groaned in their seats. "Ah shut up you pansies." Annel had spoken out. "We all had to learn Japanese and Chinese at some point here, and god knows half of us know either Pashto or Arabic. Something that's similar to Common Roman shouldn't be that hard."

Doc had piped up. "My medical training should help, actually. I do know a bit of Latin because of it."

Blackburn extended a hand to Doc from his chair. "See? A little optimism goes a long way… We'll be forwarding your element readings as soon as we're confident translations are up to par."

"We'll need more prep than that." Ramirez growled; arms crossed.

Blackburn grimaced. "Yes, but I don't think we'd have the time even if we weren't dealing with an entire unknown element."

Andrade nodded. "Japan wants to get in, secure a foothold, and proceed before the international community puts its foot down in regards to such a move. It's in, therefore, our best interest to follow to provide advisory at the very least. The President made it very clear to the Prime Minister that the US will not sustain a mere oversight capacity when the US has sustained a tragic loss… I assume you, Hitman, assume the same stance."

Emerson licked his teeth with a closed mouth, tilting his head. "Have we been chosen because of our personal connection outright?"

Pierce stepped forward before Andrade could answer. "You've put enough Romans into the ground to quantify a professional, pragmatic experience with them. The emotional why of it was… influencing, but not the main one."

It came with the job: this feeling that washed over Hitman. They were tools, cogs in a machine. In not so polite terms they were merely assets in the military, not people. The indoctrination, the training made it so they accepted it. They felt used, and yet, it was okay, it put them in a position to do something about family lost.

"What's our timeline?" Emerson asked again.

Andrade glanced down at his notes again. "Month and a half, you're setting off in late August."

"And beyond that?"

Andrade paused, thinking, but finding nothing. "Can't say. Mission objective of the Special Task Force is to simply bring those responsible for Ginza to justice. However long that takes, and by what method the Japanese dictate."

"And if we find Dickwad Caesar on an action and we shoot him dead?" Masterson grit through his teeth.

"If it was only one man responsible that'd be easy."

History showed otherwise, time and time again.

It never was just one man responsible about the indiscretions of a nation. Lawyers and judges, commanders and communities, generals and gentrifiers. They all followed and enabled.

Wouldn't it have been easy to just kill people and solve problems? Emerson had thought for a moment that it had been the answer to his questions.

They weren't.

* * *

In a morbid sense, the prison had been a museum at the same time, albeit the items of that display had been alive and a few hundred feet away. What had been a watch showroom had become a mini-forensics and study lab. Masterson had led enough of the squad out to study the particular beasts that had been collected, both living and dead examples, leaving Bannon and a few examples to look over what it looked like when a bullet hit chainmail and plate.

5.56, nine millimeter, 12 gauge, 7.62 full metal jacket.

All the same essentially, after a point.

"Take any air support they have out of the equation, and it's easy." Bannon had made the obvious comment as she knocked against the shined metal, right below where a bullet had made its mark.

Blackburn had gone on besides Emerson and Bannon. "Some sort of magic too, ain't much on that. Apparently, it was what happened with comms." He motioned for them to follow him, leading them along the inner hallways of the mall, where offices for the store branches were expected to have been propped up. Instead however, JSDF MPs stood at attention in front of doors, glass meeting rooms for managers and mall staff.

The air of a prison filled their two noses.

Emerson shifted his rifle tighter to his body.

How many Iraqi or Syrian prison camps had the two of them been through before? How many blacksites had this spook been to?

"Violent ones." Blackburn made the comment, flashing his ID badge to the JSDF MPs. The Rangers needed no such clearance.

Medical personnel had been shuffling in and out of the cages of some, shit and grime on their gloves. Blackburn had made his way past those doors, those windows, revealing men bound by cuffs to makeshift cages, evil looks in their eyes: soldiers who refused to stand down.

It was an image that had to register in Emerson's head: down into prison jumpsuits, these were just white men, in chains from a lost war. It was an odd look, one that didn't quite sit well in his head when he was used to so many Arabic, so many just simply _brown _people held up like this.

Though color and race paled when Blackburn had finally stopped in front of a conference window to a "cell" left all alone save for one occupant:

The upper half of the prisoner's body had been human, as far as Bannon and Emerson could tell, scarred and thin, but a sinewy fighter, all the same. Tattoos in an almost runic, tribal pattern had made itself known on it.

Their hands had been forced closed by bindings, gagged at the mouth. Degraded, a prisoner by any other token. A prisoner of war, no less. "For our own good," The guard at the door had said. "They can manifest fire, pull items and stuff like that. Actual magic."

Magic, fantasy, madness. From the lower half of the prisoner, forced into the center of a room in a metal chair, Bannon and Emerson saw the uniqueness of them, and indeed many of the prisoners that had come from this Roman legion.

Their hooves had tapped along the ground, eyes burning through its observers.

Bannon remembered from the stories her babysitter used to tell her, of dungeons and dragons and the arcane: This was a Satyr. From beneath curly brown, unkempt hair, that of horns poked out.

"He's just… a person, right?" Emerson had asked aloud.

Blackburn hadn't made a nod, but the guard had. "Yeah."

"They're Human, back out there," Blackburn threw a thumb over his shoulder back to the mall proper. "That's for sure. Tests we ran on the body show a 99.7% match with us. Rest of those beasts, those walking pig men and ogres? They have relation to our animals in this world." Blackburn cocked his hips, perplexed he had even been saying this himself. "All of them, like him though," Blackburn finally said pointing at the Satyr, motioning for them to move on. "They're all of general intelligence, undistinguishable from us really. The other Romans treat them as if one of their own. They are of our own… archetypical personality and mind… It's the boars, the beasts as we're calling them, they're a bit lower but still of intelligence enough to understand the others, us even."

Below, in the storage facilities of the malls, the prisons for the beasts had been made, and far above in its rafters, Sergeant Masterson and his group had looked down upon them and knew what it was like to be superior, to see a people able to be slaughtered: Pigs.

He tempered himself, if only because heavily armed JSDF MPs had stood by as well, looking down.

* * *

They spent the day there, like a trip, almost, knowing they would be back, to study and to learn about the enemy.

The JSDF had been cognizant of the Rangers, giving them their berth as they commanded their presence: of milk and steak, bred and born American special forces come here so that they knew better how to fight.

"Smoking? My mother was the same way." An MP had made casual talk as Bannon and Emerson had been perusing the prisoners down below, trying desperately to find a point of difference between them and her. The answer that Bannon had given had been said more times than she cared for since she had been eight.

She shook her head. "I had surgery on my throat as a kid. Had some sort of infection in it that wouldn't go away. Ain't nothing as cool as smoking unfortunately."

It had gotten some time for Emerson personally to get used to Bannon's voice, as if she was always gurgling pebbles, but they had been comfortable now. The MP had squeamishly nodded. "Ah."

Seeing the MP's distress Emerson had motioned off to the open sections of the mall, and how some of the aid tents had been set up, a cursory glance at them at what they could see from their elevated point revealing bunks and tables, perhaps not too different than Ranger accommodations when forward deployed.

"We had no shortage of tents, that's for sure." The MP had said, noticing Emerson's gaze, motioning out to the trees and the tents that laid between all of them, weak looking men shuffling amongst themselves in the camp.

Emerson knew what he was referring to. The response to the New Fukushima Disaster had created this outpour of international aid into Japan, of those, refugee tents had been sent for the displaced. And there had been many in surplus, with further removals expected as the true breadth of the zone expanded more.

They would return to 1A in the coming days, weeks, months, learning all they could about these Romans, however on the first day, when the gravity of their enemy had started to set it, Emerson could only look down on all of them and think of what hope, what idea they had about who they were, inversely.

The marbled floor, the bright, gleaming lights above, of soft whites and glass… The mall was a capital of capitalism, of the modern world and the Romans did not understand what they were in; what prison came with branding and fountains?

They were all anxious, huddling amongst themselves, avoiding contact with their guards above as, every once and a while at random, a group of MPs would wade their way through and pick one or two prisoners for questioning.

Linguists had been carted in from all over the world in order to make any sense of this, to at least start a baseline understanding, and the furthest that anyone had gotten had been individual names. They all sounded of the Roman, Italian type: ancient.

Felix, Cornelius, Decimus and Philo, Urban and Claudio and every breed of Roman understanding.

This was the visitation of Rome proper, it felt, but the underlying magica of it all, the fantasy and surrealness of how they got here, it had given Emerson a headache even thinking about it.

It was toward the end of the day and the Rangers had been started moving to the rooftop for transport back to Yokota, a new wealth of information within all their heads and not exactly sure about what to do about it, put asides ideas that they were supposed to know: Of the difference between Sunni and Shia, choice terms and body language customs of common Afghani understanding, rules of engagement in urban areas as far as deployments were involved; all of this bumping shoulders with how much firepower was observed to take down a walking pig, or what magic did to comms (nothing good).

The dissonance between what they were born for, trained for, clashed with what they were expected in that insane world to do.

Emerson found an anchor in a familiar sight. He had wandered to the other half of the mall, more JSDF concentrated than the section he and Hitman had been carted into. There was word from the top down that the Japanese government was to be issuing him some sort of commendation, some sort of award with so many other first responders, so he, at least, was warmly received by walking personnel. He could only reciprocate, and for that, he was offered the direction to go.

It was a bridge over the main way of the mall, connecting the opposite second level walkways. It was held down by two guardsmen, looking downward due to its ideal firing position in the case of a riot, but none had came. The prisoners had been rather ambivalent to their whole situation, unsure of what was happening.

It offered 2nd Lieutenant Itami Youji some peace as he leaned against the railing and browsed his phone, catching Emerson in his peripheral as he approached. Both men had a flash of recognition on their face.

"Same briefing?" Itami spoke in English as Emerson joined him, their two hands clasping in a polite shake. It was rather good for an older Japanese man such as himself, Emerson pegged.

Emerson only returned the favor in Japanese. "Same briefing." Again, Itami was impressed. "Lieutenant Itami is it?"

"And Lieutenant Emerson, right?"

"Right."

The two men had leaned up against the railing of the mall, over the Romans.

"You mentioned, your first name, I think it was Kay?" Itami asked earnestly.

Emerson nodded, looking at Itami, avoiding the sight of the Romans beneath him. "Kristian is my first name. Kay is what you call me."

"Kay… Kei." Itami tried the word out on his tongue. "Knight."

"Hm?"

"It's what your name means, based on the interpretation."

"Funny." Emerson drawled, looking down. "They treating you special?"

Itami pocketed his phone, figuring his time to read up on his latest online issues gone with, not that he particularly minded. He turned over, looking down with Emerson with a slight hint of continuing intrigue. "They always have… but yeah, nowadays?"

"Well are they asking you to go through?"

"Orders. They had me and a bunch of officers from my base briefed today. We heard that the Americans- you, would be coming over too."

"Me specifically or just the Marines?"

"The Marines, but I figured I would see you again. Special forces and all." Emerson had remembered how intently that he and Masterson had told him that fact on the day, and what it meant that they were willing and ready to go back out into Ginza. Looking back on it Emerson could only blush.

"I'm fresh, new, rather. Outta West Point, into Ranger training. Deployments in Africa and the Middle East, but nothing too hot."

"You consider that new?"

"As far as the Rangers are concerned, yeah. I never kicked in doors, didn't see the theatre at the height of it. All things considered I was just there as the final act."

He had heard the stories from other Rangers: of the final days of the Forever War, pulls back of American forces combined with the arrival of a thousand different militias, chasing them out of the country and, for all intents and purposes, out of their world. It had been like the Fall of Saigon, the week it happened: Baghdad, Kabul, Mosul and Fallujah, names that were ancient history as far as the War on Terror went, rearising as every trace of the United States was turned over, coopted, and burned. It wasn't bloodless, it wasn't peaceful, and it was far from the peace with honor that America had tried to do again from Vietnam, but it was the end of a path gone on too long.

American foreign policy had been on the backstep for years, but still, some agreements had to be maintained: Much like the defense pact that had been maintained in Japan, much to the chagrin of a new Japanese generation.

Emerson didn't devote too much about himself onto thinking about being an apparatus of the state.

"I never wanted to be a soldier, or a Ranger for that matter." Emerson hung his head back, looking through the glass ceiling and storm clouds above.

"You love your country that much then?"

Emerson had chuckled. "Perhaps, but, nah… Coming out of college I had… shit to work through. The military provided."

And he was always the overachiever. What was higher than Ranger? Not much.

"I see," Itami considered, hand in his pocket. "I understand, a bit… It's got job security, I'll tell you that."

Emerson nodded. "That it does."

Though job security hadn't been an issue as much as actual security. Emerson looked over Itami. He was a normal man, a normal JSDF member by his mark. The JSDF, up until the last few years, had been comprised of older men, not like the American experience of such. Much like the entire country's demographic it had been skewing toward an older majority, but even then, there was something about Itami. He wasn't like him. Not in a moral or philosophical sense, he just seemed… not built like a soldier, outright.

"Were you there? North Korea?" Emerson asked point blank, tipping at Itami. He shook his head.

Kim Jung Un was gone, the cabal of the Kim family came crashing down as North Korea, in the final cry of the Cold War, rang out against all of Asia. The world had answered.

"Nah, no. I was in training for some…" he held on the next word, "_certifications _when the DMZ went down."

"Yeah?" An interesting word to use.

Itami nodded, thankful, a smile on his face. "I went into that training, and when I came out, apparently Kim-Jung Un had died, a power struggle had happened, and North Korea invaded the South." He said this with as much light heartedness that could carry with a continued, and then ended, war that had destroyed the Korean peninsula whole. Pyongyang had been a concrete mausoleum and Seoul was sent back to the stone age, what had been North Korea turned into another military buildup as China lost its buffer state.

"So Ginza was your first combat?"

"I didn't fight, in Ginza." Itami fired back, almost offended.

"You killed one of them." The snap of his neck had resounded in Emerson's memory.

Itami stared into the crowd, into the memory of what it felt like to snap a neck. Like a baseball bat, broken in two. It was cruel of Emerson to say that outright: he had his first kill that day. As if it was a goal. "Wasn't what I wanted to do that day. It was supposed to be my first break in a while." He palmed his face again. "I'm guessing we won't have one anytime soon anyway… How about you? You used to this sorta stuff?"

The American Ranger considered for a moment, looking down upon the prisoners.

"My Rangers," Emerson started. "They're new. I'm new. Save for my staff sergeants and an old goat, we've barely been out there."

Itami sniffed. "More than me."

He'd been on distant sands, on missions that never existed. He'd killed before, but never so personally, never so upfront. He wasn't a warfighter before, just a man who shot the poor and old who had picked up AKs and bought into movements that, at least on their face, used them. The enemy was distant silhouettes and inside buildings, never seen when they called in their fire support.

"You been up there? Fukushima?" Emerson asked in turn, "What was it like? The morning after?"

The end of the world was in Itami's eyes as he remembered the hours following his deployment to Fukushima. He remembered suiting up in the most uncomfortable, claustrophobic gear he had ever worn, stealing his breath away from him, but at least keeping him safe from the radiation. He remembered breaking shovels and buckets, trucks and tools, trying to contain as much debris as possible. At the very least he hadn't dealt with the bodies that were brought to bear. He remembered seeing life sucked from the very world as the animal carcasses built up and the living examples were put down: oddly, because of it, gunfire echoed throughout the towns they came through, putting down animals too far gone.

Hopefully, very hopefully, not people.

For hours at a time, he could only hear his breath as he waded through radioactive water and sludge, unsure of what he was bumping into.

And only after that, when he was suited town and given his recovery period, he, as an officer, would be in earshot to hear this:

_"Where do we put it?!"_ The General had yelled at them all, at each other, and at themselves regarding the collected debris and sludge. _"We can't burn it, we can't dump it back into the ocean, we can't even touch it!"_

_ "Sir-?"_

_ "Where?! Where do we put it?!"_

Emerson recognized the distant look in Itami's. He would know. His father worked in the VA in New York. He had seen that far away visage of people gone back into memory almost every time he showed up at the offices as a child: people lost in Afghanistan.

"Lieutenant Itami?"

Itami blinked back into coherence at Emerson. "Ah. Sorry, it's been a long day. Got a longer day still. I have to work out my will when I get the chance."

Emerson had hardly considered his own up until that point, nodding. "Got family?"

Itami paused, pursing his lips before continuing. "Just a mother… and an ex-wife. My ex, she's always bugging me about money and all that."

"Hmph." Emerson had made a passive agreement.

"I mean, you must know how they are: _women_."

Guy to guy talk. Naturally. Emerson was a guy so he must've understood, right?

"I really don't." Emerson took another look down, trying to find faces to focus on, hoping that had been enough to answer. It hadn't.

"I don't…?" Itami pressed.

Emerson had seen past the language barrier, for it wasn't that particular barrier which had been causing the difficulty in understanding. The particular nature of communication between two different people holding two different common tongues had always been a difficult dance, but all language could be brought down to scale. That much was proven by how much progress was being made with the Romans. It was why Emerson had summed up what he had meant in all but two strong words:

"I'm gay."

Put as bluntly, as casually as he could, Emerson explained. Not the first time in his life he had to explain, nor would it be the last. Itami had understood that immediately as he fumbled about, reclaiming whatever awkwardness had been there and stifling it down. "Oh. Sorry, I assumed. I shouldn't have."

Emerson hadn't been offended, one hand up defensively. "I'm used to it. I'm not really the usual type, I can imagine."

Black, a hard-hitting special operator, an American; all these things checked off in the implicit assumptions Itami had made of course that made him think that Emerson was like many American SOF: masculine and female loving.

Itami straightened his lips, settling back in. Americans were weird. Emerson's radio buzzed. They were dusting off soon to head back to Yokota. "If you say so."

Oddly enough however, the two men were comfortable with each other.

"Kay, right?" Itami asked, hand out. Emerson had taken it again, a shake given. Goodbye for now.

"Itami?"

"Yeah."

Emerson had considered. He hadn't exactly made a friend in the JSDF yet and, all things considered, he had a good feeling about Itami. "We should reach out, over the wire. Meet up or something before whatever happens, happens. I gotta feeling we'll be seeing each other a lot more."'

"Yeah, yeah," Itami started. "I'll let you know I'm not exactly a real social guy. I'm more into my… hobbies, when I'm off."

Emerson could only motion down to the morass below them. "We're going to be on for a long time, my guess."

* * *

The USS Fallujah had been the ship that hosted the 7th MEU for its time in Japan. An amphibious assault ship, it had contained all that had been necessary for America to properly invade a beachhead on any foreign soil. A wing of F-35s, helicopters of various types, and drone launching capabilities had been the extent of its aerial capacity, it having seen its complement scrambled during the attack on Ginza.

Those same aviation elements had been doing maneuvers overhead Tokyo Bay and further out at to sea that day. Distant thunder echoing even back to the deck of the Fallujah.

A few weeks had passed since Hitman's initial visit to 1A, training and orientation for whatever was going to happen across the simply christened "Gate", well underway.

The blur of the pre-invasion steps, checklists and authorities making sure everything was by the letter, even Emerson had felt it in his Rangers relatively sequestered, removed state from the rest of the United States Forces in Japan. There was a rush to this that felt off, and he could only do his best to match the pace and tempo of a modern world that wanted to respond.

Delegates from every nation that had lost someone or something in Ginza had been arriving at Japan's doorstep, and the UNs, to be assured, or to be given their permission

"Lieutenant Emerson, we've been told to ferry over some vehicles for you and your men when the initial push comes." Colonel Pierce had explained to the man besides him, looking over the side of the Fallujah docked in port of Tokyo, off to the cargo unloading lot afforded to the Fallujah and the MEU. All of its ground element had disembarked.

Artillery guns, utility vehicles, logistic carriers all spread out like a model kit, being run over by engineers and maintenance crew. The most standout of the vehicles however had been the four, lined up right next to each other, M1A2s. The legendary Abrams tanks. Painted over in a sage, grey scheme, all the vehicles in questioned had been shedding the camo and the paint meant for a different, Asiatic countryside. Distantly, from his perch on the Fallujah's deck, Emerson could see their crews going over the checklists in their hands, making sure their war machines would roar to life as intended.

Just beyond the port however, something else had been roaring:

The Japanese public, come yelling at them at the outskirts of the port.

Their chants had been iterative: _Let us handle it! Go home GI! You shall not repeat history here!_

History was dead. History didn't care. Emerson internal musings had been like that recently. It was the academic in him.

Pierce pointed off toward a block of four Humvees: the distinctive angular vehicles that had carried American troops through warzones that century. All of them had turrets upon themselves, surrounded by protective glass housing, sporting Ma Deuces and grenade launchers. The same sage, OD green coloring that had been applied to all of the vehicles had been the same with those Humvees: mounted on their rear sections, motorbikes.

"Looks like we're being prepped for _lurp _work." Emerson pegged; Pierce nodded. Long Range Recon Patrol.

Pierce had gruffly explained. "You're called Ranger for a reason… How's the medal?"

They had brought the three of them in: Masterson, Itami, and him. A grand stage put up in the Japanese senate. A lot of lights, a lot of cameras, and dress blues put on. A lot of medals like these had been handed out recently, commendations for relief efforts in Fukushima, and then before that, Korea. The Japanese public had its heroes, and, for some reason or another, they just had to pin themselves upon the first Americans there that day.

_"Howdy, lieutenant." Behind the stage as their names were being recalled and their heroics accounted: of the first fighters, and then the organizers of the great evacuation, Masterson had given out an amiable shake to Itami as they met. "You look good."_

_ "Sergeant Masterson, isn't it?" Masterson had given the man a nod._

_ "Cam Masterson, at your service. You did a real man's thing, gathering people up."_

There was a tic to Itami, Emerson had come to know. They chatted over text, speaking of general things, avoiding the fact that an invasion like the world had never seen was soon to be on. He was a capable man, he recollected, but not a man to use his abilities. An odd conundrum, one that didn't quite sit well with himself personally, but people wanted to live easy lives, he understood.

_ Itami had blushed at Masterson's admiration. "Anyone would've done the same."_

That wasn't true in the slightest, based on what actually happened. That's why the three of them were called heroes, and Emerson had another medal pinned over his heart. They were special because they had met those that came through the "Gate" and now were being told to go through.

They were given rewards, commendations, in between training and orientation with the Romans. Face to face time with them, as unneeded as that was. Through a glass, through safe distance, all they did was observe people that they were told came from another world with the identity of Rome.

"I've been told by Blackburn that you're going first."

Emerson had blanked as he looked down at that motorpool with the chants of protestors distant, droning out before realizing Pierce was talking to him. "Hm?"

**"You'll be going first, Ranger."**

* * *

**_manifest destiny_**

_n._

_1\. the belief or doctrine, held chiefly in the middle and latter part of the 19th century, that it was the destiny of the U.S. to expand its territory over the whole of North America and to extend and enhance its political, social, and economic influences._

_Random House Dictionary, Random House, Inc. 2015._

* * *

"Saderan." Masterson had tried the word on his tongue. "Sad-air-en? Sad-ear-in? Sadairen?"

"Sergeant Masterson I don't know if it's your dumbass hick accent or you're actually stupid as shit. Sad-dair-in."

Annel and Masterson yelling at each other had been a useful tension breaker, between a Texan and a red-blooded New Englander butting heads hadn't been unusual in the group.

Corporal Black had been a Bostonian, another marksman of the group with Valentine , and he had, for a moment, understood his section leader's ire. His accent had been thick with Harvard Yard as he spoke up that moment, kicking his legs up in Yokota's Ops room. Hitman had been taking a lot of meetings and briefings in there, the room adorned with screens and a large enough table for them all. "Roman is easy enough. Up to me we would keep it that way."

Emerson had twitched a bit as he dozed, center of the table in his own chair, flanked by both Masterson and Bannon. "We don't call Iraqis Sumerians."

"Called them Hadji, didn't we?" A Hitman called out.

"Not in front of me." Specialist Ava had been more than willing to confront. The man had been of the particular blood to be offended. The son of Kurdish refugees and all that that entailed. How many people had been personally affected by Islamic extremism before they had gotten into the military? Ava had been one of them.

As far as how Hitman was composed Emerson had always found it peculiar, clashing against his expectations after his handful of assignments. Colorful was a word he used. A third had been women, all of them from up and down the United States, not too much shared between them save the Ranger tab. Divorcee, deadbeat dad, former teacher, former cop, dead dad, would be Olympians… hopefuls and nihilists, outspoken and reserved. It was a miracle they had all been in line, and, distantly, Emerson had thought that they held together for his sake, and they did.

They needed to be together for what was being asked of them:

Tip of the spear.

The wooden door of the room had opened and the now familiar sight of an Asian-American spook had been revealed, folder in his hand as usual.

Blackburn had walked in and the Rangers beat back the urge to stand at attention. The man didn't hold rank but he was clearly in command. "Hitman." He greeted.

"Spook." Masterson greeted back. Blackburn could only smirk as he threw his folder onto the table up front and leaned against the blank space of the wall where the projected would throw up.

"You know you figure that my JSDF counterparts would be able to keep a secret but, hey, nothing is sacred now apparently." That secret being what Colonel Pierce had told Emerson that day. The good lieutenant had kept it under wraps for as long as he could, but word had leaked amongst JSDF personnel over this fact: The Americans would be going in first. More specifically: Hitman; Rangers.

"Japanese personnel on base seem to take it personally." Bannon commented, finger up against her cheek.

"Well, why would us Americans be first to respond on what is, according to them, Japanese land?" Blackburn bellyached.

"But that's it, eh?" Doc pointed out. "We're going first?"

Blackburn had nodded. He had had outlined it in the briefing room, a month later to officially state the rumor that had been propagating throughout the JSDF and USFJ. Other companies and platoons had jeered, some had been relieved, but all had held Hitman in higher regard with the blessing they had: They would be the first Americans over. More than that, they'd be the first moderners over. They'd get the first cut of fresh meat.

"You will insert twelve hours before the Special Task Force and maintain security on a perimeter surrounding the insertion exit. Now, if you've kept up on your studies, we know what this hill is called, right?"

"Alnus." Emerson answered with some of his Rangers affirming.

"Right."

The language translations had been coming along. Lots of Latin, lots of something new. Names, places, who and what, they were easy enough.

The name of their enemy had been revealed then, when gesturing to the flag of a dragon on a purple, royal backdrop. Most of the men and the beasts had answered the same: Saderan.

The Saderan Empire, or Kingdom, some political entity which entitled itself to conquest and imperial might so much like Rome. That was the enemy.

"Hitman will insert with an element of victors," Humvees, "and maintain position before the first armored elements of the JSDF and the 7th MEU make their way through. Japanese want a ceremony in broad daylight, hence the delay. Some real George Bush Mission Accomplished shit."

Blackburn had been moderately dispassionate during all of this, and to be fair, most of Hitman. These were mission orders.

However, there was something more: Emerson had been told to show up in their civies. Regular clothes. Jeans and shorts and tee shirts and flannels. "Lieutenant Emerson, we'll forward scouting reports from our drones of the immediate AO, however be advised you will not be engaging unless engaged."

"We were engaged about a month ago, don't you remember?" Masterson leered.

"You know what I mean, Sergeant Masterson. Go ahead and take on 60,000 men and dragons with your AR, see how far you get."

Masterson had only raised his hands placatingly. He got the point.

Masterson and Blackburn had been clashing for weeks and Emerson wasn't quite sure if he wanted to get between his friend and the CIA station chief. "You get a week off, put your affairs in order, have some fun, and then we're putting you through."

They were dressed down right now, all things considered. Plain clothed on an Air Force base that was ground zero for all US military assets dedicated to what was now known as the Ginza Incident.

Words, definitions, names and titles, so many had been learned, a new, ancient yet new language on all of their tongues from countless days and nights studying.

_"I thought I left this behind in Bozeman." Bannon grumbled during a night in particular, having been knee deep in linguistics studies. The woman had been from Montana, and she had been fairly educated, even compared to Emerson. Her rough and tumble disposition now however had been made of her, subject to what life she had lived since she was a younger woman._

_ "They say if you learn one thing new every day, you'll live an extra ten years." Emerson had encouraged as the entire platoon of his sat amongst each other in a ready room turned study lounge._

_ "As if I need another ten." She spit in return._

A thought from Emerson. "Japanese SOF not up to snuff?"

Blackburn shook his head. "Japanese SOF is still on deck above the 38th. Hazama tells me they're having SOG group up a little later, but, as it stands, you and the 7th MEU's Force Recon team will be the only SOF on call with the Special Task Force."

"What's Force Recon's prerogative?" Attached to the 7th, there was a Force Recon team attached.

"Hard military asset knock outs. Your deployment, is, of course, more nebulous, broad. We get to work better that way."

"To what ends?" Emerson asked.

Blackburn had considered the answer for a few moments in his head. "To the ends we find over there."

Open ended missions.

"How are we finding it then?"

Masterson had smirked at Emerson's question lines. He was a text book officer in a sense. The older Ranger had thought he'd be so adverse to it when he first came to Japan, but Emerson had that spark of measured youth and an equally damaged cynicism that had made his West Point tic work.

Emerson had meant really nothing by it. It wasn't his place to think about that idea: open ended missions with ends not readily defined. By that measure he wouldn't think about how long he'd be out there or what he was going in the stead of.

"Play it by ear." Blackburn answered. The Rangers of Hitmen all shuffled uncomfortably. "Oh don't give me that. We're dealing with a Roman-Imperial society and, you should all know, we're digging up a lot of stuff about them that the United States is charged to disassemble. You think the world public would be quite welcoming to the fact _slavery_ might be on the table?"

Rome was built by men and women in chains, and it had taken indeed, more than a day.

"Slavery happens every day in this world, sir." Emerson had recounted. "I've been there, in the markets in Yemen."

"And that's unfortunate Emerson, **but Yemen doesn't matter**. This place does now."

That was how fickle it all was, in the end. The history of any Humanity, wherever there was power to be had, it was built on the backs of those subject to it. Slavery, in all of its forms, was something they knew was wrong, and how easy it was to punish the enemy for it. It mattered because they were the enemy. American foreplay across the Middle East was always in anticipation for a mission. A mission that Emerson had hoped would never come.

"Are we there to reform, or to punish?" Emerson asked again.

Blackburn had shrugged. "Depends on the direction of the JSDF. Our actions, in the end, will be dictated by them."

"Then why are we there at all?"

Emerson had very much been a new Ranger, Blackburn pegged as he asked. It was a tragedy the Forever War ended, the CIA spook thought.

"Because people need to die and you are America's shooters. You have your orders."

It was so easy for him to just retreat behind the papers, behind the orders and play out a part. And yet… He had killed people. He had been of the unfortunate kind on that Earth to kill, in anger, and in necessity. He had cast men down with shots through their hearts, and the upper limit of Human morality and decency had been put asides. There was nothing more above him to stop what was about to happen.

Japan had been attacked, and thus they would fight there.

Emerson sucked in his gums as he repositioned his thinking. "Anymore specifics on our operation parameters?"

"Not really, it's pretty simple as far as actual mission conditions are. We'll fill you in in the hours before about relevant AO information regarding weather and observed enemy force composition."

"And the after?" Masterson took his time to ask. Bannon nodded in agreement to the question. She never spoke up during these briefings or meetings often as to not strain her voice.

Blackburn had an answer. "You'll be deployed into Recon Teams. RCTs. General Hazama will be forming groups and we'll have Rangers attached as necessary. Least he could do for us. From there you'll be pathfinders and first up as far as inward territory pushes go. Meet and greet or shake and bake if it comes down to it. It's why we need you all up to snuff on your local stuff."

"And, per chance, how are we getting there? Just using what they had?" Doc had asked, one of Hitman's most observational members.

"Correct, with your vehicles."

"Seems a bit dangerous, don't you think?"

"It's all good. I mean, _they _walked over that entire distance, remember."

Smaller details were passed over in the walk down from that. Gear, logistics, immediate battle plans and rules for engagement. Nothing they hadn't done before. The fact that the same had been said for here as it had been for the Third World had meant something as the familiar, uncomfortable pattern of pre-mission briefings were given.

"We leave Yokota at zero dark of the day in vics toward Ginza. From there last preperations will be made and you'll be underway. I'll follow with the main force."

"You know how to gun, spook?" Masterson had been as skeptical as always with Blackburn, but the man nodded.

"I did my time." Was all he said before he looked at his operators for the duration. That was all that was needed before the Rangers were let free for the week, but, as always Emerson had raised his hand and his platoon had internally groaned. Though it was a good question, in the end.

"We have a name for this operation?"

Hitman was interested then.

What was the name of their crusade?

_"Operation Odyssey Ultimatum."_

Blackburn seemed self-satisfied with that answer. Bombastic, theatrical, dramatic. What better name to invade another world with?

* * *

People had been out of the briefing room almost immediately, passing by Blackburn as he sat and used the room to himself. Better that way, peace and quiet, and fine by Emerson as long as Masterson didn't stay behind.

"Rubs me the wrong way." Was all he said to Bannon about the issue. The three of them had remained in the hallway as the rest of Hitman disseminated into the base, going off it, probably, to live out their week of freedom before the op. They should've been elated. They weren't. "The spook that is."

The three made their way slowly as Bannon gruffed in her rough voice. "I'd be more concerned if he rubbed you the right way, Sergeant Masterson."

Bannon was always more formal, more in-line, in front of him. He couldn't blame the woman, given his own responsibilities, but even then and now it felt more biting than usual. "Just a man doing his job, sergeants." Emerson had responded, flanked by his two NCOs.

How casual they looked passing by the still uniformed base staff. Only Masterson had noticed Emerson had been wearing the same clothes as he had on that fateful day.

"Comment, sir?" Bannon prodded at Emerson as they emerged out of the main building of Yokota, out to the tarmac and the way to the hanger where the Rangers were set up.

"Go ahead." Emerson answered.

"Bit hard and heavy with the interrogatives, Ell-Tee. Just saying."

"Not used to it?" Emerson glanced over his shoulder at the woman.

"Last CO was something of a nerd like you. Cared too much, didn't let us slide, you know? We know what we're doing."

Emerson had chuckled. "I think I'm charged to ask a few questions, given we're invading, don't you think?"

"Shucks, you're so young and bright-eyed Kay." Masterson had chuckled. "Makes sense someone like you would get sent into a fuckin' fantasy land."

"Oh here he goes." Bannon had been the forewarning to something of Masterson that Emerson had been well acquainted with, the several short months they all had been together. Not that he minded. The three spectrums of speech between Hitman's leaders had gone from "not if she had to", "professional observational commentary" to "my daddy was a lawyer".

Masterson's daddy was a lawyer. Mother too. Which was why his language when he really got rolling was full of the theatrics meant to sway the mind and heart.

"Who but us would be charged to go into the dark? To pick up our swords," Masterson had held his arms as if he was holding a rifle at high ready, "charge against the mongrel and uncivilized hordes because of unequivocal injustices dealt against us?"

"It was the fucking GI-reens that had those commercials, back in the day." Bannon's whispers, beneath her breath, could hardly have that volume with how she talked, speaking of Marines with swords fighting dragons. _Dragons._

Masterson had held the door open out as they all passed, winking at Bannon. "I'm sorry sweetheart, daytime television died five years ago."

"Mm."

"But still. Aren't we the perfect people for the job? Rangers. We're **Rangers. **At private school some of the nerds I bullied as an absolute cool dude, they had some Dungeons and Dragons shit, and Rangers were full up in there."

"Being charged doesn't mean we're perfect for it, Sergeant Masterson." Emerson had fed into the beast of Masterson as his voice dropped into his southern.

"No, we're fucking perfect for it because those assholes killed the family of one of our own. We go over there we know what we're doing, we know why we're there. We know what we do when we have a gladiator right in front of us and a gun in our hands. That is a privilege we have: _We know_ what we have to do, we know who we're being charged by. We are so lucky; the luckiest who ever lived maybe."

"And what do we have to do Cam?" Emerson asked in a deadpan. He had to let Masterson get this out or else it would stew inside. He knew.

"**They presented us with a question**: Would we be conquered; would we be victim to them. Well we have an answer. **I have an answer**."

Emerson never thought that he had a particularly noteworthy personality. He grew up in Brooklyn amongst years where decades happened, where black kids like him never got the chance and were pulled both ways by those who would and those who stopped them. Emerson kept his head down for many reasons.

Masterson's entrance into his life had, perhaps, been the cosmic balancer as he looked up at Japan's eternally grey sky, jets and Black Hawks above, and raised his hands up, trying to reach for the sun beyond.

"War."

War was the motherfucking answer.

* * *

Bannon had slapped the man's broader back after his theatrics, letting the air and his opinions spill out of him like grey water from the gutter. "You're a drama queen. Right and prissy, you know that?"

"Someone's gotta." He gruffed, taking the shock of pain as the three continued walking forward across the concrete toward the hangers. For all of Masterson's bombast and the question and riposte that he offered, as much as it bothered Emerson internally, what could he say to that if not agree?

The first stories of Man are of murder and repentance. Perhaps, distantly, Emerson thought, Masterson had gotten those wires twisted.

But another question: "Sergeants?" The two turned to him. "Are you two predisposed for the week?"

The two had glanced at each other in a flash of worry, but any of that was dissuaded as they realized what Emerson actually meant: _Why were they walking to the cages?_

Masterson, as always, had something to say: "I don't got free time no more, Kay. Not until we're over there."

Bannon had been more reserved, crossing her arms in front of each other as she looked out of Yokota, out toward Tokyo, or, perhaps, back toward America. Toward a life she used to live and a life she left behind: taken and forced from her.

The grooming standards for them as Rangers was always, somewhat, relaxed. Now the orders had come down for a little more relaxation however. Recommendation from Blackburn.

_"You look like a white trash Chris Kyle." _Emerson recounted one of his riflemen leer at Masterson.

_"That's redundant. Chris Kyle was white trash." Masterson had dutifully answered back._

Bannon's frizz on top of her head had been growing back steadily. Almost as much hair as Emerson himself, to be honest. She had always kept to the traditional standards well enough. There was enough now however to blow in the cool wind as she considered her answer, pulling back bangs behind her ears.

"I mean, Ell-Tee, you known me to spend my nights out? I don't got much. All I have is this."

_This._

Admittance.

Emerson knew the tone as he nodded at her, they arriving in that gaping mouth of a hanger and seeing their cages waiting for them.

Bannon's cage was next to Emerson's, so, as much as Masterson was loathe to leave their company, he meant his words true and serious: He had stuff to do, gear to prep, and his discretion was that he was going to do it in cargo shorts instead of a BDU.

Emerson's cage was rather uniform, if not a little bare. These cages meant for the more special operations types, or, at least, more SOF than him, were a new experience. It hadn't been what he had gotten in Africa or the Gulf, where door kicking for Americans was out of style and highly discouraged. The fact he was given one here, meant for either his deployments into a wartime China or even Malaysia, there was something there from his education that screamed out at him.

"I didn't take you for a lifer, Sergeant Bannon."

Emerson had sat onto the stool on his cage, looking at his rifle before him.

This was his rifle, there were many like it.

He hadn't fired a gun before joining, but, it turns out, he was pretty alright at it. Pretty alright in the Ranger world meant good apparently. It was a little more front heavy than he would've liked, the sensors and lasers needed as called for his position in the squad needed, but he had kept it all together cleanly, a black cloth wrapped around the handguard keeping the wires still and kept.

For the time being, those designators and lasers weren't outright needed, so he had started the long job of unwrapping and unequipping.

Bannon had chuckled in her throaty way of laughing. "I didn't take you as uptight, Ell-Tee."

Emerson had nodded, pushing asides his .45 pistol. .45 was the order: stopping power was needed for any engagement with foot mobiles on the other side.

"I think it's a bit unfair, anyway," Bannon started. In her cage she was messing with her AR's magazines, refastening the mag-pulls on them, "To be assuming like that. Obviously, we can't predict the future."

"I mean-" Emerson had felt a little odd. Bannon, and Masterson for that matter, had a few years on him. Few years, and a few more bodies, especially. "Is this what you want your future to be? You and Cam are the only ones coming up on ETS."

Ramirez had just signed on for another five years to Emerson's surprise. The man had just turned forty.

"It's a plan, Kay." Bannon sighed. "And Cam's right, you know. It's nice _to know _what you're doing."

A silence passed between the two of them, Emerson glancing at the photo of his family on his work bench: He should've been talking more to them, but Opsec was clear, and he couldn't get distracted. He couldn't dare to unload this to people who wouldn't understand.

"You think he's gonna be okay? Cam?" Emerson didn't turn to look at Bannon through the chains, but the foley of her equipment had stopped. She took longer than Emerson expected, but he had helped her along. "I'm asking you as the platoon sergeant."

She breathed out. "I don't know. He left Trace behind, that's what he tells himself. Let his family die. That's a lot. It's a lot for me, for the platoon, yeah, but for him specifically? Somedays it just looks like he's blaming himself for it."

Emerson had seen the way Masterson ran his PT. How much teeth grinding, how much sweat he let off. The pain was good for him.

"That's not fair of him."

"Nope."

"He sounds so confident though, in him knowing what to do." What to do. Those words stood in for something else. Orders, not given by Command or officers, but by Tracy himself: _Kill them all. _"I just hope it's not the only thing in that god damn head of his. It's not healthy."

"You would know?" Bannon asked accusingly.

"Yes. I do." Emerson did know what it was like to want to kill someone, and, for some reason, for some trust that Bannon had found in Emerson in the months she had been under him, she had known what he said was true.

The silence after that was broken by light footsteps, unmistakable to the Hitman leads:

"Ah, shit, you too?" Loke had timidly said, with her Mk18 in hand.

"Welcome to the party." Bannon nodded.

A week promised for relaxation and leisure, just before the deployment. It was a cruelty to think that could be actually done.

Bannon was right, Emerson realized as more and more of Hitman returned to them.

_This_ was all they had in the end.

One by one, the Rangers returned to their cages.

* * *

"Hey, spook, you didn't have no SEALs or black ops boogeymen go in before us eh?" Masterson had been as peppy at zero-dark as anyone. Ginza was dead. The entire area from ground zero cleared from civilians in a nearly mile wide radius. The only ones there: the military personnel. They stood on the rooftops, on the streets, guarding, patrolling.

Standing at midnight's watch before the Gate, Blackburn had looked at Masterson's cat call from the side, he talking with several JSDF and 7th MEU officers. The man looked so odd, dress in office clothes, but with a plate carrier on him. No response was given.

The safe zone was put out another mile Emerson knew, but even then, the protests had gone on. Just outside the safe zone the yelling of a Japanese public: yelling for everything. That the JSDF shouldn't go there, that the Americans shouldn't be here, and that the Gate should be closed.

"You got an opinion on that, Lieutenant?" Listening to the echoes, Doc had asked.

There were there now: in the dark, before the Gate and a metal dome which had been constructed around it. It was as if it had been Chernobyl. Though saying such a thing was in bad taste.

Fukushima was still on fire.

Distantly, the cries of how Japan could not afford to go there, beyond the Gate, had been heard. There was another disaster still attacking Japan. It was one of radioactive material and a natural disaster, but still: this one, the one that spawned in Ginza, it had to be answered in force.

"Not one you'd like to hear, Doc."

"Please, I'd like to hear someone other than Sergeant Masterson speak for once."

"Eh, still. It's not one I'd like to tell our doc."

"Fair enough, Lieutenant. But I'll have you know I was about one-year shy of being a full-fledged doctor. I can take a stupid opinion or two."

They were standing before the Gate, out of their vehicles as engineers and support combed their vehicles over, making sure they were ready.

The rovers and recon drones sent over, and returned, had been fine of anything anomalous. The journey itself wouldn't take more than fifteen minutes, and nothing bad would come of it apparently, in that dark void that was blacker than the night.

Ginza had been powered down, leaving only the ghostly industrial lights of an impromptu checkpoint before the Gate left. The colors of green and grey clashed. The 7th MEU's colors and camo had been that meant for China. Now the grey smear of a multicam variant had been it, the same as on Hitman. They stood in their gear in the middle of Tokyo, and the sensation for Emerson, being there without fighting, it felt hollowing.

The dead were beneath his feet, blood soaked into the ground, and yet he remained there still.

Four vehicles; _victors_.

All Humvees. Turreted. Two M2 Brownings, one Mk19, and one with an anti-air unit, adjusted for organic targets. Each of them ammo, supplies, Hitman had enough to set up a little FOB on their own, but it was all precaution.

"Could be a trap. Get us over there and then cut off the pass behind us."

"They wouldn't want us trapped over there." Corporal Nutt had patted down his M32. Six-cylinder grenade launcher. More firepower than most regular platoons in its tubes and on his kit. Grenadier was right for him. He'd always had an idea for angles and precision that was different than gunning.

The man had been a teacher. Emerson had overheard him talk to Annel as she held her Mk22 on her back. .338 Norma.

Within each of them, standing with their kits and weapons, had stood the firepower and capability necessary for Rangers to be who they were: Special Forces, and yet something else. Warfighters that could slug it out where SEALs and Deltas were not expected to.

"The hell are we still wearing plates for anyway?" Harris had adjusted his own rig, the man lugging his 240 machine gun. "Level 3 beats out most of the bows they're using, and not like we're gonna get in range for any of them."

Bannon, in a past life, had done her time living off the land. She'd understood better than most the weapons they would understand as primitive, used by the Imperials they faced. "Take it from me, Corporal, all it takes is one arrow."

"Hitman." Emerson didn't need to yell as the group all coalesced near him, three men walking toward them. It was who they were that made them render salute. "Lieutenant General."

Lieutenant General Hazama. A bronzen man with a sense of duty and conviction to the Japanese people. An enlisted soldier, haven risen his rank from the very bottom. He had been the man in charge of the JSDF detachment that was sent to Korea.

He was now in charge of the Special Task Force.

Familiarity was on his face as he saw Emerson and Masterson. He had been the one to pin the medals onto their chests. With a salute down the Rangers had settled.

Besides Hazama, Blackburn and Colonel Pierce stood.

"Have you all worked on your studies?"

Spoken in the tongue of Lingua Franca.

Hitman had all nodded and given their affirmatives in kind.

"Good." Hazama had said in his own native tongue, looking at these men and women that stood before him. How young they were compared to him and his JSDF. When did the American special forces get so young? "I will be honest to you, Lieutenant Emerson, you Rangers are not who I would've wanted to cross that barrier first."

He spoke directly to Emerson, chest to chest with him as the Ranger cradled his rifle in his arms. Emerson nodded, not too offended. "I'm liable to believe the same, sir."

Hazama had tilted his head at the man, nodding in turn. "But I have no doubt about what you all are capable of. I trust you will give us a red carpet on the other side?"

"Take and hold, sir." Emerson affirmed. "We're not going over there to start a war."

Pierce had an amused huff. "Wars already started."

Hazama however had turned over to Pierce. "May I remind you, Colonel, that this isn't a war."

Pierce had hardened up. The two men had been clashing since Ginza over the very fundamentals of American involvement. The commanding general had echoed the misgivings of so many of his countrymen: The Americans should not get involved. Why? The answer was plain. It was plain in the thirty-year history that preceded them all to that point.

"We'll do our job right, General." Emerson had muttered from his lips. It was the confidence prescribed in him by the virtue of his men and women.

Hazama wasn't convinced, his thick moustache wringing, but Masterson had appeared at that moment at Emerson's side. "God willing, general."

Hazama sucked in some air to his nose and then confided. "Godspeed, Rangers."

It left nothing but Americans as JSDF personnel worked in the night around them, the great metal dome casting a shadow on them even now.

Colonel Pierce had tipped his head at Emerson. "You've been briefed of Imperial troop movements, correct?"

Not more than five minutes ago the last recon from the last drone had been told to him by a specialist. Nothing had changed. An army, the same as the one that had hit Ginza in the first place, had been amassing and surrounding the exit point for the last month. Building and building, either in anticipation or preparation. The worst-case scenario: They were going to march again into Ginza. The probable: Nearly none had come back from the initial assault, and they spoke of the manmade monsters that had been this modern world.

They stood prepped.

They could never be prepared.

"No changes, sir."

"Right… Well, there's not much to say is there now?" Pierce had looked to Blackburn, a cigarette in his hand that burned.

"No there isn't colonel. The mission commences now." The CIA man had taken a look at the Gate, and they all did. The mysteries of the infinite barreling out at them. To think too long upon it would've driven them all mad.

Pierce sighed, backing down from the thoughts of what this world was about to do, and who was doing it. "The ROE is the same, to engage, you must be engaged."

Emerson shot a look at Masterson with all the worry in the world. Masterson had nothing but a stone face.

"Sorry for no fanfare, Rangers." Blackburn spoke once, looking up at the JSDF along the roofs, seeing where the bodies once piled high and the living were walking, cursed on battlefield streets. Not less than two months after they had been getting ready for a parade.

"Not like we need it."

A dog whined, pushing all to look at it at their feet: A hulking German Shepard, its own vest and combat equipment mounted stood bright eyed between the feet of Peters at the ready, leash attached to the dark man's own rig. It had only lightened some of the moods there.

"Khan." Peters in his deep voice bowled out, and the dog fell in line, looking at the darkness of the Gate and seeing something that they couldn't see, couldn't understand.

"On your go Rangers." Pierce had given him their grace. "We'll see you in twelve hours."

"Hitman! Mount up!" Bannon had yelled out, a sound like sandpaper, loud in the night that roared at the men and women she had been in charge of with Emerson. They all had nodded, sucked in their breaths, and faintly, in each of them, knew it would've been the last breath of air they got from this world.

Their masks went on. Some had balaclavas, some simple half-masks; keffiyehs and fabric from missions past and distant lands traveled before in the same pretense, but as they went on the form of the Rangers all melded into one. One could not tell one from the other except in the exceptional detail of gear and stature, on each of their helmets: night vision.

There was no fanfare, no great horn or gunshot, just the low rumble of American Humvees, purring before the Gate with a simple mission: get to the other side.

"Check, check comms." Emerson had clambered into shotgun of the lead victor as he thumbed his radio. "This is Hitman 1 Actual, affirm. Over."

Masterson had been driving the lead Humvee, and he hadn't need much use to call over, giving Emerson's arm a tap. "Hitman 1-1 Bravo, copy you clear."

"Hitman 1-1 Alpha. Reading you, over." Bannon had responded in trail position.

"Check comms down the line, people. When we're over there, it's gonna mostly be local."

"It's just a simple camping trip, Kay, no need to be so serious." Masterson chuckled behind his keffiyeh, hands and 10 and 2, AR in his position by his seat.

"We're invading, Cam. I don't _want _fanfare, but, I feel like there should be more than this." Emerson had let go, his usual rigid form breaking as he brought his gloved hands to his face. "Is this not history?"

Nutt had been on the turret in the lead victor with Emerson. "History is for other people, Ell-Tee. This is just life for us." Racking the turret's Mk19, 40mm was loaded.

"You want to be out here?" Emerson had asked of him, turning around, seeing the two other occupants in the car: Annel and Loke.

Loke flashed between two personalities for as long as Emerson had known her. She was a young woman, his age, supposedly out of place in the SOF world but yet the new norm. Sleek black hair, looking more at home in a sorority in some state school than in the gear she had now. She was competent, athletic, spunky and Masterson's third favorite in Hitman, and yet…

She was the pointman. She was good at her exceedingly violent job in an already exceeding violent profession.

"Did I tell you, Ell-Tee? That I was the first Muslim girl to make it to nationals in my neck of the woods? Hijab and all." Emerson looked at her. She didn't wear her hijab as intended anymore. It was a purple ring of soft cloth, surrounding her neck now. Annel had looked at her with sympathy, understanding even. "I thought I made history running track, I thought that… _they _would be better to me."

There was something haunted in her words. A haunted past of living in an America.

"People get what they're due in the end, Talia." Masterson looked in his rear view. "Some people it comes harder than others. I want to be out here, Kay."

"We all do." Annel spoke. "We _have _to be out here. For Tracy. It's **what we have to do**."

* * *

**_manifest destiny_**

_n._

_1\. A policy of imperialistic expansion defended as necessary or benevolent._

_American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition._

* * *

The door was open. The blackness was before them, gaping at them.

"You doing alright ma'am?" Doc had asked in the rear victor, he in the back seat as Bannon settled into shotgun. Specialist Ava, Corporal Harris, and Sergeant Ramirez had been with her.

Bannon wasn't quite sure as she scratched her cheek behind her balaclava. "Tired." She answered.

"You slept almost all of last week, ma'am." Ava had pointed out as he adjusted his NODs.

"I don't think there's much wrong with that." Bannon grit through her teeth.

The switch to hit the Humvee had been pressed upon, seconds later its engine up and roaring. Bannon had checked the suppressor on her M4, making sure it was tightened as she felt for her NODs above her head.

"Is this it? An invasion? We're invading?" Harris had asked with his M240 across his lap, a flash of light from inside revealed something on the inner lid: A picture of him, holding a child, disappeared as he had seated in rounds.

"Affirmative." Bannon said with her mouth, muffled by a mask. "Look alive."

"This'll be over quick." Ramirez would know. History haunted him from the Korean peninsula to the Middle East. "It has to be."

_If only. _

Bannon thumbed her radio. "1-1 Alpha to 1-Actual. On your go."

It was like driving off a cliff: the feeling of what it felt like for the drivers to stamp their foot down and roll forward into a black nothingness. It wasn't even black in reality; more of the absence of _anything. _Yet it was solid, it was straight, it was level and traversable.

The Americans, the Japanese, in the dead of night had looked all to the Humvees as they slowly rolled forward into the black: There they would be the harbingers of two armies. Reflections on the Humvees bulletproof glass reflected those that looked inward.

Hazama had looked, side-by-side with the CIA officer that had been Blackburn.

"We will tolerate no mistakes." He told him, watching the Humvees disappear in blackness.

"Neither do we." Blackburn coolly said back, smoke on his tongue.

All of the Hitmen were braced as they crossed over that indistinct line: between reality and nothingness. A smooth transition as they were surrounded by nothingness with the Gate and Ginza behind them. All that apprehension, it remained as the seconds passed, the moments dragged on as they all scanned around them. Nothing but nothingness.

Is this what it was like to feel dead? Emerson had thought as he smelled the air and smelled nothing. There was just nothing to his senses about being there outside of what they brought in: A draft from behind them, of Ginza, coalesced with the militaria they were riding in and having.

"Freaky shit." Masterson spat through his own mask: a bandana, like the cowboys of his homeland.

"Hitman 1-Actual to all callsigns. We good?" Emerson called up on the radio, checking behind him. The headlights of each Humvee shone and they all read back.

"Hitman 1-Alpha. We're good."

The gunners, exposed nominally in their turrets, had all moved their guns around, trying to find some point, some reference. But there was nothing.

"Lock your wheels. Keep going straight. I don't know if we can do SAR in fuckin' oblivion." Masterson drawled off in his own tongue, doing so as lead victor.

This was the void. The place between worlds, literally.

"My Daddy's gon' be proud." Spoke over the air in the radio, giving conversation. His voice was one meant for radio. It instead was given to that who controlled beasts. Khan was whimpering behind the radio.

"Radio silence." Emerson spoke off. He really didn't need to give it. All of them there were afraid of opening their mouths, as if letting in some poisoned air, some unknown demon who manifested in this plane. Fantasy was real and it killed, so why not the idea of purgatory?

Invasion. This was invasion.

And yet ahead of them was no bombed out city, no ongoing fire mission or even a concrete objective. Just a whole world.

At a certain point they had driven far enough away to be caught in the middle. It felt as if to the drivers that they were spinning in place.

"No music, no nothing?" Masterson had asked with his light heart. He was having fun, knowing what was ahead of them. "By God Kay, don't you know that the drumbeats of war demand rhythm?"

The engines of the Humvees and his voice: the only sound. There was echo, deafening echo heard through their ear protection that spiraled out from them in a million directions.

The sine whine of someone putting on NODs reverberated. Bannon had looked out from her seat around in rear position.

Nothing.

Calculations were that they needed to drive for fifteen minutes straight. Time was indistinct, the white light behind them and the white light that appeared in front of them one and the same.

It didn't matter where they went, they would get to where they needed to go.

* * *

**_manifest destiny_**

_n._

_1\. A popular slogan... It was used by people who believed that the United States was destined — by God, some said — to expand..._

_The American Heritage New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition_

* * *

"Direct twelve. We've got our exit."

Bright white. An exit, a door like the one they came through.

Safeties were flicked, chambers racked.

"In and out. Right? Right?" Nutt had stammered, rotating his M32 GL ready.

"Get in and sit still." Bannon ordered, bringing her AR to high ready in the car.

"Secure a perimeter, Humvees set up a spread." Emerson had ordered. "If we're engaged right out of it, we make the call to stand or to retreat. Do I've got that Hitman?"

_Hooah!_

Sixty seconds out.

Loke buried her face in her hands as she made a silent prayer to a god that left her behind.

Doc had breathed in the driest air in his life as he remembered, somehow, he had gone from surviving cancer to the extraordinary circumstances of this. Was he dead all along? He thought to himself.

Annel tightened her gloves. Nomex. They were her father's. A father that had been lost to the War on Terror. She was here because of it.

Ramirez, he had lived through that war and he had remembered this feeling too well. It had been within him for so long that he had _needed _it.

Masterson grinned behind the wheel, reveling in that feeling as Bannon felt a silver necklace beneath her dog tags burn against her chest. It was the mark of Christ. Given to her by another man who had taken pity on her.

And Emerson; Emerson of all people, as the light glazed over them as they continued forward, blinding them he thought of the first time he was nearly killed, and had nearly killed in turn. It was the same day, the same person on either side.

He remembered that time, that moment, of every burn of pain and cut on his skin. Every broken bone and every droplet of blood out of his mouth.

He remembered that time, but nothing else. How easy it had been now for him, apparently, to shoot, to kill, and how easy it was to accept that it was him going through this.

The story of their world was lived out through them as people, and now they would connect that to another world. The thing that connected them was physically, the Gate.

It was the blood that had been spilled from it however that was what bonded the people of the two worlds together, for better or for worse.

And they were out, through, smelling air miles fresher than that of Ginza. They smelt the air, crisp, of a new world at night. It was night, and they looked up: the moon was blue. Just like so many recon images sent prior they had emerged atop a hill, the Humvees driven side by side with spacing as they parked and all but gunner and drivers poured out on rocky and hilly ground. Just as they expected. The recon rover had been politely by their side. Proof that this had been the correct world.

"Disembark!" Emerson had ordered, and the Rangers did, looking back through where they came and saw that same void, that same blackness. Pulling up the rear a squad had peaked behind the Gate itself, and saw nothing, a circular perimeter established in the immediate as their movement died down and they finally, finally took in the new world in the haze of their actions.

A clear sky above and a bright moon, they didn't need their NODs as one by one the Rangers had dared a look with their bare eyes. A mile and then some out, all to their front:

Thousands and thousands. Thousands of hundreds below.

Camp fires and the moving, unknowable mass of living things, war drums and dragons and beasts, keeping their distance, preparing their next move. Like the warbands of Rome they still remained there as they looked down on them.

What damage could they do with what they had with them? What damage could the Humvees do? What damage could they, as people, do to them?

Far greater than they would ever know.

Masterson had, upon a lump of dirt, put himself as the tallest man in every direction, looking down on everyone else. He looked down on the Romans, with all his fire, all of his promise, all of his want to kill them all.

Emerson had looked at his grand standing, expecting what never happened.

Instead of the bombast he expected, of a man with his heart at his fist and ready to go, he saw only a man with realization. He was now before them all and it revealed to him the truth:

One of life's greatest tragedies was that everyone got what they wanted.

"They're all dead. They're all already dead." Realization had been on his lips. The weight in flesh he wanted, _needed_, to take was now on his chopping block and it was a cruelty.

Was it a boast? A demand? A statement or an observation? Masterson could only darkly mutter beneath his breath as he took a knee and looked down and saw nothing but the promise of a war beyond which history had never seen before.


	5. 0-5: Engaged

**0-5**

**Engaged**

**End of Intro Section**

* * *

A week and a half before they crossed over: Back at Camp 1A. Chained at the table, but still sitting all the same. In his issued clothes: white tee-shirt and slacks, this man didn't look any different than any other American. A western white man. Like any guy out of Brooklyn maybe. Any Italian prick Emerson had seen cross over from Jersey or Arthur Ave.

Though his fundamental beliefs, his understandings in the world, his tongue, they were not any Emerson had known. Though he tried to understand.

"It was harder to learn Japanese. I'll tell you that." Emerson had crossed his arms as he and Lieutenant Itami sat next to each other in a repurposed interrogation room in the utility halls of the once mall. It was minutes earlier, and all they had was each other to talk to. He spoke it in Japanese, and, likewise, Itami, bed-ragged and generally tired as he usually was nowadays, answered in English.

"English is even worse. My ex, she sometimes needed a translator, and, well, I was drafted."

"How terrible." Emerson spoke dryly.

It was the banal and the casual that had kept Itami and Emerson afloat in that rush of two months and change since Ginza. The ruminations and the disguise of a normal life that they were living that kept them grounded and sensible and, currently, not about to be orientated to a Roman.

They had to know the enemy. Whatever that meant.

Blackburn had brought them asides, both of them, and said this: _"I know we didn't do this back in the Sandbox, or for North Korea, but you people have to understand what we're dealing with."_

Lieutenant Itami, for all the years that he had on Emerson (not much), he had known of people like Blackburn. They were the type of people to speak in the broadest of generalities or the most cutting of specificities, and nothing in between. Often for a reason, but it was just the type of person that existed above the chain of command. He was only a second lieutenant after all.

"Blackburn, he reminds me of a captain…"

"Oh yeah?" Emerson looked up from his phone, he slouching in his foldable chair. One hand had been swiping away at a group chat with his family, the other resting on the holster of his sidearm.

Itami nodded. "She was a colleague of mine. Organized the first group from my base to head out to Fukushima."

"What reminded you?"

She was a mother, with deep roots in Fukushima. She understood what was at stake and she had gone to war against the disaster far more fiercely than she would ever against a North Korean or a Chinese.

Itami shrugged. "Just that sort of… go getting attitude."

Go getting. It was a particular phrase. Blackburn had hidden his age well. Latter half of his thirties, probably, but the man had been around long enough to have been a station chief in Asia, of all things. Emerson supposed he had to have been a hard worker.

This was opposed to the man across from him.

Youji Itami. Itami Youji, that is.

He was an interesting man, by Emerson's mark, and he had known quite a few. His entire platoon had been made of interesting people. Itami had filled in a slot that he hadn't yet seen though, at least in the military.

It was very much self-described.

_"I really try not to be that much trouble on base. As long as I'm one ahead of worst, my life is gonna be okay." Itami spoke to Emerson, top of his class at West Point. "I really could not operate on the same level as you."_

_ Emerson and Itami had gotten a meal, off their respective bases, after their first meeting at 1A. Quite frankly Emerson didn't quite buy that._

_ "You're __**Special Forces**__ though." Emerson had reminded him._

Lieutenant Itami Youji. A thirty-something year old man, a slouch to his back, rims around his eyes, as care free about life as any man his age with a respectable income, had been Emerson's equal. Equal, if not superior.

_"Well. The hobby takes precedence. Not the work."_

And that hobby had been of manga and online doujinshi.

Emerson didn't have a head himself for the media, but he wouldn't judge what a special forces operator did. Perhaps there was something deeper to him that betrayed his outward appearance: lanky and tall, darker hair on top of his head and a slight fuzz rimming an angular chin. A long face, amiable smile. Frankly Emerson didn't mind looking at him, though there had been a mystery to Itami that he couldn't pin down. Something itching at him as if there was a great secret to him, beneath the skin.

Any mystery Emerson would try to peer into was wiped away. The door their room opened and the clank and clack of chains shuffling toward them. Emerson's hand had remained on the back of his holster and .45, but he wouldn't do anything even if he tried. A coldness, a shock rain through his veins.

JSDF MPs had escorted a man in plain clothes to their metal table, loops on it for the chains that bounded him. He looked like just a prisoner. A prisoner of their world. Not a man, removed from wherever he came from: another reality outright it felt.

He looked down trodden and beaten, but what prisoner wouldn't? He wasn't unhealthy looking, just jittery, a fish out of water.

The MPs had left the room, leaving Itami and Emerson dead silent as the three of them sat: Itami and Emerson on one side, the man on the other.

He was scruffy. That was the first detail that spoke out to Emerson. Scruffy, probably not from shaving in quite a bit, but he was a man. Masculine, the mark of a soldier on how his exposed arms looked, and the way the tan on his skin showed: it had been from marching in the sun. It was the unmistakable olive brown of the Mediterranean.

Brown eyes. Handsome brown eyes.

There was no savagery that was on him. No savagery that Emerson looked for to justify the wish of his comrades:

_Kill them all._

Emerson's mouth was dry, all the way down to his throat, but it was Itami, putting back his phone, that had spoken first.

_"Salutaran." _Itami had quietly started, inching his chair close, putting his arms on the metal table before them.

_Greetings._

This is what they were here for: to talk as they did in their Lingua Franca.

_"You know Arabic?" _Itami had asked over text one day.

_ "Yep. French, Pashto, Japanese, Arabic… I'm pretty passable in all of 'em." _

They were working on Lingua Franca now. But, more than that, they were forced upon to have an understanding: that this was a person. All of them had been people.

The prisoner had seemed surprised, odd, that Itami had spoken in a language he understood, but he, shaken, had calmed himself, breathed in, and repeated the same.

_ "Salutaran." _

His fluency far and beyond beat Itami's however that wasn't surprising.

_"Salutaran."_ Emerson had finally thrown in. _"Meux namen est Emerson."_

Itami nodded as Emerson began his own part. _"Meux namen est Itami."_

The prisoner had looked back and forth of his two opposites, shaky in speaking, but he point was made as Emerson gestured to himself. This was who these people were. Like all Roman soldiers, he could only be strong and respond, breathing in and speaking his truth:

"My name is Mercaius."

* * *

Standards for Itami had been in a strange limbo that suited him just well enough. Normally he had been assigned to desk duty in a bog-standard ground regiment of the JSDF. It put him just on the outskirts of Tokyo, which was by far preferable.

The closer you were to Ginza and Akihabara, the closer you were to the beating heart of mangaka Mecca, and he had always the preference for his hobby.

However, this was in light to a particular detail about him that Emerson had been well enough to point out: He indeed had been Special Forces. Or, at least, trained like such. He hadn't been in formation with such a team in a while, perhaps because they operated at such a higher level that he didn't impress upon his superiors. That being said he had preferred it.

Bread and butter officers like him, up until recently, were a relatively metropolitan career; one that kept him more like an office worker than a soldier.

He hated paper work however so the grind was the same, but he tolerated it.

He preferred the paper work to the recent responsibilities of the JSDF: the ones that made him wade through destroyed countryside and contend with the toxic radioactive waste of another nuclear plant gone the way of disaster.

He joined in at such the right time to avoid the Korean War's end outright, avoiding the meat grinder that had put upon the South Korea, American, and expeditionary JSDF forces. It just meant that he had been on deck for the Fukushima relief efforts.

Being out in public in uniform hadn't been a strange thing nowadays.

"It's… strange. I mean you usually never brought home this part of you."

Risa. A mangaka herself, more on the doujinshi side of things. A short woman with spectacles that would make even a professor shy away (vision put upon by the glare of a screen and her drawing tablet). She always had the look of someone who just got out of bed, but to be fair, so did he. They oddly enough matched, and not.

She stood across the other side of a power box turned their breakfast table that cold morning in Ginza.

Ginza. What had been a world away in the days following the incident had returned to some form of normalcy following the Ginza Incident. The blood-soaked streets and the charred corpses that had been planted there by the dragons flying above had been torn up, renovated anew. Buildings that had burned down had been condemned and broken down, and risen up in record time. Business returned slowly, eventually, and certainly up until that one day in late Summer.

Ginza had never happened it seemed, and yet…

Itami was here. Three divisions of the JGSDF had been there.

A rifle had been across his back along with his kit. Ammunition set and there. 9mm pistol on his hip.

Four hours to D-Day.

Itami shrugged, adjusting his fabric covered helmet, the camo of their destination newly applied. "This part of the job never usually happened this close to home."

A morning, damp and cold and befitting of what was to happen.

A Type-74 tank had rolled past them in order to bunker up in an alleyway, in preparation for the ceremony.

Risa had almost shrunk further as it rolled by meters away, adjusting disheveled glasses.

"It's so strange, seeing the army out here on the streets." She commented, eating down a croissant ham and cheese. She never ate well but it was endearing to Itami.

Itami had another comment to that, but he held it in himself as he looked down the road and saw an iron dome. It was stranger to see the Roman army rolling down these streets.

A block in every direction of the Gate had been cordoned off on the day to day, held jointly by a majority JSDF force, with the US Marine Corps holding down a choice unit.

The American Marine Corps. Itami had been around them. Cross-training, the ever present maintaining of Japanese-American defense initiatives. The Americans had been around even more in the last few months given the new Fukushima disaster and the toxic waste cast upon the prefecture. American aid came in the form of bodies and supplies, and, begrudgingly, the Japanese government accepted.

Itami kept most of politics out of his head, but he wasn't ignorant. The Japanese had wanted the Americans out for years. The protests every time a Japanese girl had been raped by a Marine in Okinawa, a drunk American killing the innocent after a night out, they had elevated to a fever pitch up until Korea, and when it passed, it became a grating reality that the Americans were to stay for the foreseeable future. The want of an independent Japan, and all of the fury and pride that had culminated in the yelling, had been replaced with something else:

_**Close the Gate.**_

The rhetoric had been clear from the protestors: There was no need to go beyond the Gate. Those that did the deed had been dead. Dead by a measure of nearly a hundred thousand. To go further would be to intertwine unnecessarily.

Itami had gotten the briefing on them, and he understood. The tangle of other people's lives was always tiring. He figured the same could be applied to national politics; to war.

Because that was what he was doing: going to war.

The zone around the Gate in Ginza had been expanded tenfold, and the only people in had been the media, those invited, and the soldiers of two armies.

Distantly, the protestors yell at the very border of the security area had echoed. Echoed against walls, against glass, against heads.

"I've set up everything, by the way. Just in case." Itami chewed through his own packaged egg sandwich. What was unsaid, couldn't have been. It wouldn't happen. "Half to you. Half my mother's expenses."

One of Risa's bushy eyebrows raised. It was reassuring he had made sure but now…? "Heh, how much are you making nowadays?" She tried to lighten the mood.

"Hazard pay recently has been up there."

"Yeah… Hey, uh, you never tracked any of that radioactive stuff from back up North down, right?" There was worry in her voice. She knew better, but radioactive material was a concern nowadays, even down to the dirt on one's boots or the rain in the sky.

Itami shook his head once. "They sprayed me down for hours every time we went out. I'm clean. Probably sterile now to be honest." He laughed it off but it was a fear in every JSDF member who had gone into Fukushima to clean up the mess. He didn't mind, sans the crippling sickness. He took things as they came to him.

Risa spat at him, not that she was as well, as scary and heavy as that thought was between them, once husband and wife appropriately."As if you were ever concerned with kids."

"Hey. I love kids. I was once a kid and that was pretty fun."

"You love things that **look** like kids, I'll remind you very much."

It was very hard to describe the idea of lolis to Emerson, Itami recounted, a fact that Risa had been very fondly been able to remind him of as the social norms of liking cute girls was put on him.

_"They look like they're twelve man."_

_ "But they're not, and also it doesn't matter."_

_ "…What?"_

Itami had been distant for a second, remembering the young child he had picked up before they all retreated back into the Imperial Palace. She was the lucky one. The one that had been saved. Not trampled, not cut down because they were simply there that day. Had her parents survived? He didn't know, and it haunted him still. At the least, at the very least, if the worst came to pass, she wouldn't see her family as Emerson's man did. Tracey's family, all killed and dead. Two young daughters.

Children.

Other families around with the servicemember of their group had all been hugging tight and closely, saying last promises and good will in that last outing of Ginza as the last preparations for invasion were underway. The shadow of the Gate over them all. There was no such thing for Itami and Risa. They were too special people; jaded perhaps, but not really ones to want such a dramatic and emotional send off.

A quiet presence was, perhaps, all that they needed as they ate their breakfast and approached zero hour. Balling up their trash, they walked to a bin together, minutes away from the entire operation from being underway, families receded, cries and sniffles in the air as men and women parted ways with their beloved.

Goodbye was too dramatic for what Itami believed he was doing. Risa had something first though.

"If you see cute cat girls, please take pictures. I need the references." She was ashamed to ask, but it was a cover for something else, grabbing the fabric of his uniform, sling of his gun in the way. Her head was done, unable to look him in the eye until she found the courage to what she really wanted to say: "Stay safe… okay?"

One of the great things about the history of them was that there had been a base to all of their interactions that was stubbornly persistent. They had been friends. They had known each other since middle school. She, if anything, had known him since before the tragedy of his parents came to pass.

Her worry was sincere, and Itami knew that.

He could only return the sincerity in a hug.

He was tall for a Japanese man, so she was enveloped for the briefest moment in that chaste moment. The quiet before the storm. Patting her back through her hoodie he spoke in reassurances, of a familiar tone kept for her. "I don't know when I'll be back. Maybe I'll get leave for New Years. Maybe we'll be done by New Years."

_"One of my Rangers. Our sniper. Specialist Annel. Her story's generational." Emerson spoke about all of his platoon. His family by creed and duty._

_ "Oh yeah?" Itami tilted his head as they hung out a quiet park one day._

_ Emerson nodded, closing his eyes, realizing he had started too casual. "Her father died in Iraq when she was a kid. She joined and went to Iraq __**too**__."_

It had been over two decades since America started the Forever War. Long enough for a generation to have not only been born into it, but fight in it.

Itami wanted this to be done by Christmas.

It was with a stark, indistinct thought that he remembered this: He had been older than almost all of Hitman. All of them had been children of this 21st century.

Emerson was born in New York, which is why he asked one day:

_"Kay, do you remember 9/11?"_

_ Emerson had shied away, shaking his head._

_ "I was born in 2003."_

The years had gone by so fast.

"See you around, Risa?" He had pushed off her and she had nodded.

"Youji." His name in return. What a funny relationship they had, he thought.

* * *

Going into formation in the middle of Tokyo wasn't something that anyone there would think they would do. The jingoism of military parades was beyond the thought; however, this was a special occasion. A special occasion for a "Special Task Force" to go to the Special Region. He had to form up with his unit in preparation for the affairs today and the eventual crossing, walking down streets crowded with, not tourists or locals, but soldiers.

Why was he going through? He was ordered. That was the explanation for most things in his life at this point as the slightly damp morning turned into a blue sky, late summer day. If things didn't turn out this way he would've been out here, in Ginza, attending the late summer conventions. For a moment he thought of how many releases were delayed for publication and sale because of the Romans. He let loose such a comment once with Emerson as they had lunch one day, off of their bases.

Emerson had only given him a stern look. He couldn't blame him. He lost more than a day when the Romans came. He lost a soldier, and his family.

"Hey! Lieutenant!" Out from an alleyway.

Itami had envied Emerson in a way. Hitman had moved so naturally together, been so ingrained with each other as far as movement and existing together, that it had set a high standard for what he was being asked to do. It was as if each member of Hitman had known each other for all their lives, which was why he had been surprised that that wasn't the case: They had only known each other for a few months.

So, on the flipside perhaps, as Emerson was very much shaping to be Itami's antithesis by his own regard, he had his own team.

Called out for a procession of three vehicles, tucked into an alleyway, waiting for the go over, had been his team.

Past the initial incursion and securing a FOB for the Special Task Force, there was a edict put by General Hazama: recon. Recon teams were organized, and Itami had the Third.

3RCT.

Recon Team Three.

He had damned himself that he had any command at all, but it was inevitable. He was an officer still.

"Kurata, awfully chipper, aren't you?" He had greeted one of his sergeants with a pont.

Takeo Kurata was someone he envied a bit as well. All of his enthusiasm for manga and anime, an otaku by any other name, was happily shared with Itami. The pain of losing that day in Ginza was too felt by the soldier. A younger man, barely into his twenties, short, spiky black hair and youthful dark eyes. A cut and paste image of a young Japanese man which, in the JSDF, was rare enough at a point. In the late 2010s the JSDF had an issue about age turnover, wherein a good amount of the JSDF was unable to be replaced by new blood, leaving a greying populace within its ranks unsure of where replacements could be found. Indeed, there was a time where Itami was called "young".

He was only 33, but right next to Kurata he had felt the decade difference.

Kurata shrugged in his kit, patting Itami's back as he approached, the figures of RCT3 appearing out of the alley's shadow to report. "Someone has to be. The briefing said that some of the locals might be, you know…" Kurata led off with a smug look on his smirk, hand imitating a paw. "Nyah."

Over his shoulder, an actual older man. Sergeant Kuwahara. Pops, by any other name. The rigids on his face had been like the trenches of battlefields older than him, bronze skin betraying a rather lively look about him. "Do you have any idea what he's saying, lieutenant?" Pops had landed a hearty slap against Kurata's back, the man making dramatic whining back to his vehicle to the chiding of the rest of 3RCT.

"I think he's trying to speak the Lingua Franca, Pops." Itami rolled out, and Pops had agreed in a sigh.

"How're you doing, lieutenant? You ready?"

"Well, I've got about my entire backlog downloaded on my phone."

Pops smirked. "Confident for you to assume that we won't be busy over on the other side."

Another tank rolled by behind them, but it was a different kind of tank, heartier, larger, more battle-scarred. Itami's answer was demonstratable as an American M1 tank rolled to its ready position, hidden for the affairs that would proceed shortly. Riding on its hull and turret, the US Marines.

The camo they wore had been as interested as the camo the JSDF had issued for the Special Task Force: The JSDF's camo had been modern, specially designed for Mediterranean environments. The Americans had dug out a camo nearly half a century old: M81 Woodland. The Marines had worn them atop greyed and dusty painted tanks. It was as if the Cold War had returned to Tokyo that day.

"I've got a feeling the Americans will keep themselves busy in our stead."

Pops had been taller than Itami, larger, looking down on the man with a certain pity of his ignorance. Though it was in good jest. "For our sakes, let's hope not."

"Perhaps." Itami considered. The American contingent of the Special Task Force had been only a third of the size of the JSDF dedication, and yet, they came with twice the weight. It was by design the MEU had such a broad mission capability. Earlier he had seen the American F-35s be wheeled out beneath tarps, the aviation element under strict guard. They'd be the first air support in region. "Are preparations set?"

"Aye." Pops nodded, gesturing to all of 3RCT and the vehicles. Three victors of varying shape and size. "We're just waiting for the affairs and the call."

"Honestly we should just skip all of that." The voice of a woman had accompanied the sound of someone jumping on the hood of an HMMV.

Pops had been more than willing to stern. He had been a drill sergeant on another base renowned for his bite. It posed no threat to the rifleman that had hopped on the hood of the HMMV however. "Sergeant Kuribayashi, settle down, the Gate isn't going anywhere."

She shrugged as Itami saw her. "Of course not. But I heard the Americans got some over there first. What if they're getting all the good action?" She spoke with a rough, and fighty, urban accent. Quick and blunt.

He looked at the Gate, thinking of that rumor. Pops had moved off, double checking the provisions and ammo list in the rest of the vehicles, leaving Itami to deal with Kuribayashi. "Eh. I don't think Kay would be the sort to go pick that fight."

"Kay? Who's that? Do you know the spooks they've got over there?!" She seemed surprised, nearly seizing his collar as she hopped off the hood.

Sergeant Shino Kuribayashi had been, as Masterson described her during observation, a firebrand.

_"Seen my fair share of wild colts in my day. She looks like she kicks with the worst of 'em."_

And what the Texan had meant was that there was more fight in her than anyone could possibly expect. She was a fighter, a brawler, a shooter. Shorter than most, but willing to fight just about anyone for the sake of a fight, the chip on her shoulder had been from a household of brothers and just barely missing the JSDF deployment to Korea.

New gloves. That's what Itami had noticed as he looked at her hands, resting at idle with her rifle. Oakleys. Popular with special forces.

"Those broken in, sergeant?" Itami had made a point to use his finger to gesture at them. He was wearing Oakleys too. The leather had been strained and nearly breaking, but they worked still.

Kuribayashi didn't notice, banging the shining polymer knuckles together, her brown, almost red bangs knocking free from beneath her helmet. "They will be."

"Right." He had looked to the HMV in earnest, seeing a form by its wheel. "As you were, sergeant." Moving asides into the shadow of an alley, there was something in the shape of another soldier, another woman of 3RCT. The rest of the recon team had been idly standing by, spending the last moments of peace they could get for the foreseeable future.

Mari Kurokawa needed all she could get, slumped in the dark.

"Sergeant Kurokawa." He had greeted the team's medic with a nod. She was a tall and slender woman, about as tall as himself, which had been quite unusual. Her dark black hair had, in the light, seemed a dark blue almost. "How're you doing?"

She had looked up from her dozing against the HMV's wheel, sighing, putting on her helmet as she nodded, and then saluted. "I'm okay."

Medics tended to be terrible liars. A lying medic was the last thing anyone needed when it mattered.

Her hair had been tied at the end with a single blue ribbon, the bags beneath her eyes unkind. The two had been acquainted long before this. She was one of the first out to Fukushima when it happened, and she had remained there still in her mind.

"Mm. I hear the voyage over is about half an hour long. You gonna be good with that?"

Mari had raised one her hands to her face, rubbing it harshly. "It'll have to be. Sorry. I tried to put in as much time up north as I could before I was dragged off and… and…" She sighed. "I'm ready."

No she wasn't.

Calm and reserved, and sharp tongued when strung tight, her tongue had been sharp more often than not recently. She was perhaps a warning about what Itami didn't want to be; the responsibility he had to bear if he lived out his abilities to other people. She was run down raw, and, despite this, she was called to invade.

She picked up her rifle and slung it over her shoulder.

"Are you ready, lieutenant?"

Itami had given her a hard, long look, and some of her weariness had been transferred to her. "Is there a way to be ready for this sort of thing?"

* * *

There was a way to be ready. Or, at least, there was a formality, a ceremony that had to be taken on. A civilized affair. The media, those that had lost someone, they had all come to Ginza as stands were put up in front of the Gate, and the memorial unveiled:

A blackened stone wall of marble and onyx, inscribed with the names of every single dead. A monument to something that had happened no more than three months ago. Monolithic, casting its shadow on the very street that the enemy once walked and were killed. Flowers were put by families who had lost that day, and even with several hundred people gathered it had been dead silent. Diplomats and foreigners too. A Swedish family, Nigerians, French and Mexican. Americans too.

Itami had seen Tracy first only by news articles, crazed in the photos taken of him at a hospital, and then official from his professional photo as taken by the US Military. Emerson had shown, with shame, the photo that he should've been known by: The one with his family. A Christmas card, last year that he had shared with his lieutenant. They'd been to Cairo last Christmas, the Pyramids in the background of their grandiose Christmas card. Two beautiful daughters.

Tracy was not there, and Itami looked as he had walked along that blackened wall and saw nothing but names and those that mourned.

A young girl, no more than six, stands with her hand wrapped by her weeping mother's. He cannot look away until, all at once, the call is made to get into formation.

He thought to himself of Isekai. It was a particular genre of media in Japan; most commonly it was a modern person being dropped off in a fantasy realm or the past, where their inherent knowledge leads them to have a presence of power by simply just existing. The gear he wore, the rifle and pistol he had on him now, he had to think about what Ginza would've been like if he, even alone, had been here like this. How much could he as one man with a rifle and the knowledge of how to use it would've made this wall shorter? Would he be on there though then, if he fought like he imagined?

It was something to think about as he found himself in formation, rows, in front of the Gate and a grand stage made.

Two columns, on the right: The JSDF. The left: The 7th MEU. Five wide, officers up front, NCOs and Enlisted along the back. This was who was going over.

"Hero of Ginza, eh?" Another lieutenant to his right had bumped his shoulder. Itami recognized him, at least casually. Same base, same training.

"Wasn't my choice for the medal."

The officer had straightened his back as he look down to his feet, making sure they were planted right: lead by example. "No, but you made the right choice back in the day."

Everyone told him he did a good thing. All he did was just tell people where to go it felt. And yet that had been so much.

It was like any ceremony of military merit, not too different than the one that had gifted him the medal. Being so up far front Itami had been liable to dip the lip of his helmet down to avoid eye contact with all those overbearing officers and generals who had patted his back and called him a good soldier after the fact. However, there was none of that good-natured congratulatory self-flagellation around here. This was military work. Purely the business of the military.

To the columns left and rights, media cameras had been set up, pointed at the stage: above it, a banner. "Special Task Force Deployment Ceremony".

Everyone who had been on that stage hadn't a smile on their face nor lacked a star or bar on their shoulders. They were dressed down in their kits, even Hazama, who had been sitting in that row of occupied chairs, speakers for today: the first had been himself, with the American Colonel Pierce at the end.

The shutters of cameras had gone off like gunfire as the last of the troops had aligned themselves and Hazama stood. A JSDF combat veteran. To think that there had been those type again…

Boots tightly laced, tucked in, the spitting image of a general as a Japanese man. Itami had heard of Hazama, even before they had met at Ginza. He was genuinely a man that cared for his men, but then again, he had also been a military general.

It was interesting the two main commanders of the task force had been so far away from each other, but he knew better than to count on the two of them to get along.

Hazama's podium had been of darkened wood, barely contained the man as he came to hold the surface of its table on either side, speaking out to the crowd, not through the microphone, but rather as if he was just using his voice alone.

"I am Hazama, your Commander!" The voice of a Japanese general yelling had tightened the forms of all the JSDF there as he spoke in Japanese. "Many scouts have entered the Gate in the past month, but nobody will know what happens to us in the Special Region. Thus, you must be prepared for combat to begin from the moment we cross the Gate. Is that understood?"

In one unified voice: yes. The JSDF, including Itami, had snapped and bellowed an affirmative.

Brief remarks. This was only for show. That was all Hazama needed as he deferred to none other than the current Prime Minister of Japan. Three months had been a long time, enough for Prime Ministers to change, and the world to revolve around it.

He started off with the formalities, thanking all involved, from the JSDF to the USFJ and the international community. "This bill calling for this deployment has been adopted thanks to the efforts of Former Prime Minster Houjou and the officials from all political parties. Now, at last, we are ready to deploy the men of the JSDF in concert with a deployment of the USFJ."

A few of the American officers still sitting on stage had given each other a weary look as the prime minister continued.

"All of you, the mission with which you have been charged is of grave importance to the state of Japan and its people. But we know we would want no one else to go into the breach today, on behalf of us all."

No one had wanted the Americans there today, that was what Itami had guessed made the American command staff cringe. This formality, flanked by the civilized buildings of Ginza as they wore gear they had gone to war in, dust barely beat off by cleaning, it made everyone anxious, uncomfortable. No one wore what they did there without the intent of combat. And yet the speech, the ceremony, still had to be gone through. It was what civilized people did: to speak, and give recognition of. The speeches from various political officials and officers went on, half-hours turned into whole, and the anxiety clashed with the somberness of the dead and the mourning watching from seating along the sides with the media.

Itami had felt their sorrow permeate, staying his feet and any misgivings they had about what they were doing.

This is what they _had to do_ for them.

"Marines!" The Americans had slapped, ramrod straight, the sound of boots against concrete like thunder. It brought Itami out of his standing daze as he realized it was now Pierce's time to talk, to give his words to the ceremony. He had brought a paper with him in his hand, placing it on the podium as his voice echoed with the mic. He was addressing his Marines and Marines alone. "I know what we are being called for today was not something that anyone in this world would've imagined: We are currently engaged with a foreign enemy whose understanding of conquest and war overrides the civility as we understand it. There is a fundamental difference that has caused what happened here, in Ginza, what felt like a lifetime ago.

"I find no pleasure in what we are to do, but I find, instead, responsibility:

"We are called, not as avengers, not as the furious legion, but rather, as arbiters of justice. Where we go, we will bring _justice. _That is our oath as Americans, and our promise as United States Marines." Pierce had held a silence, looking up from his paper at the crowd, half Japanese, half American. "The Japanese are our allies, and they deserve nothing less than our full support and guidance as we proceed on this endeavor."

The same officer from before had whispered into Itami's ear stealthily, feigning a cough. "He doesn't seem too confident, does he?"

Itami didn't have any time to respond before Pierce had ended his speech: "May God Bless the Special Task Force, and may God have mercy on the soul of our enemies." It was at that moment, Hazama stood, his mouth open as if to command, but Pierce had been faster on the draw, and it had made Hazama pause and break his command. "Get to your vehicles. Zero hour is now."

* * *

And they dispersed, the civilians, the media all melting away as the Special Task Force was charged and continued on their orders. In that rush of men heading to their vehicles, of decorations being put away as reporters took in last minute statements from officers and politicians, Itami had noticed the Marines accrue around Pierce's second in command: Major Sevson.

In the shadow of a fast mart as he held a coffee by the American motorpool, the Marines had their own, private ceremony. "Marines!" Sevson had continued, the circled Marines somehow tightening their stances even more as, for all intents and purposes, their Jesus Christ was before us now: the man they had to listen to with religious reverence. Just how the battlefield worked. Sevson spoke in a language that might've been liable that day to be only heard and understood by Americans, but Itami had been spending too much time with one to not understand now.

"Today you do as our ancestors of Tripoli and Okinawa did! Even in a land as virgin from the soles the boots of our glorious Corps, we will walk in the footsteps of those before us! And not only will we walk! We will Run! We will Crawl! We will Kill! All while the ghosts of Marines of days of old watch over us! _**Oorah?!**_"

"_**Oorah!**_" The cry of maybe eighty Marines that had found themselves in audience to Sevson had sounded like a thousand, pausing everyone in those Ginza streets as it echoed.

"The people responsible for the men, women, and children whose names we have inscribed on this wall for all time, are beyond this. God. Forsaken. Gate. Japanese, American, their nationality does not matter to us at this point. What matters is the fact their lives was taken unfairly, and by the God given graces we will be _**fair**_ to the _**upmost degree**_ to whoever orchestrated this attack. We will be better than them. We will adhere to our morality, our ethics, the laws of war as dictated by the Geneva convention and the UN, but when push comes to shove and we are forced to deal with these uncivilized people, as they have demonstrated during the attacks three months ago, we will do one thing above all:"

He stopped and took a breath. This was a certainly better speech, said entirely in English, some of the Japanese struggling to understand, caught up in an impromptu speech, and only following the cues from the Americans. Some had tried to listen, others just went on their way as vehicles began to roar, coming alive.

Commander Hazama had given a look of odd distress to the Major from the JSDF motor pool. This wasn't what was rehearsed for the public, and yet it drew the attention of some.

"Marines!" There was such contempt, such grittiness in his address. Itami had looked to the JSDF around him as if to confirm what he was hearing. He was alone. "Kill on three!"

"One!" Itami had not reckoned with the fact he had been a soldier, a bonafide soldier, for so long. He had taken his first only three months ago, and it had changed him a lifetime… Or maybe, just maybe, the Americans did. That's what he told himself.

"Two!" He had taken in a breath, glancing left, to the civilians still left mourning their dead at a monument. There was a girl…

"Three!"

Itami's body had snapped away from wondering about who he had been looking at as his lungs brought in air and expelled them so hard it had made the windows shake, and the ground quake with the combined emotion of the United States Marines. He had joined in.

_**"Kill!"**_

_** "Again!"**_

_** "Kill!"**_

_** "One more time!"**_

_** "KILL!"**_

* * *

"You look winded, Lieutenant Itami?" Kurata had been more than willing to note as Itami found himself back to RCT3. Itami coughed, tightening the strap on his helmet as he loaded his rifle, getting into shotgun of the lead vehicle of his dedicated unit.

"It's nothing." Beneath his flak vest he felt for a pack of vice. He had good reason as a teenager to be particularly edgy, and like so many cigarettes had been an image booster. He had forgotten that certainly they did provide a certain relief to the stress of mind. Kay had put them onto him in some way; not overtly, but the man did puff from an electronic cigar from time to time. He stayed with what had been vaguely familiar.

He had stayed hands off with RCT3 in the weeks leading up to this. Not out of any malice, but he was still Itami. If he didn't need to, he didn't want to. Though there wasn't much need for him to actually get to know his men as intimately as some did. Pops had it well in hand, and he was in the back of the current vehicle they were in.

"Are we all good, Pops?"

The man had gruffed. "It'll have to do."

"We can only do so much." Itami agreed as at once, the radio net of the Special Task Force came on and the commanders of the task force began their brevity.

_ "M1s go first and the Type-74s are in staggard column behind us! Warlords I need you up, now!"_

_ "Why didn't I get informed that Rolling Stone has a reporter with us? How copy?"_

_ "Deal with it 2-3."_

_ "We're staggered, you hear me?! Warlords first, then the Japanese armored, than us, followed y Jap infantry. Please confirm! We don't want a fuck up five minutes in."_

The American Abrams had slowly, slowly, started to growl to life against the buildings of Ginza, and they had taken onto the streets in front of the Gate as guides with lightened sticks waved them into positioned. Passing by RCT3, they each had a name, written into their turrets:

_Seoul Sister_

_ Kingdom Come_

_ NCC-1701-FU_

_ The Sultan_

In a block of four they sat in front of the Gate. Abrams. TUSK outfitted. Itami knew the type. The Americans were anticipating some close and personal. As the Type 74s passed behind them, apparently so was the JSDF. Outfitted with turret cages and extra armor, the tanks were dressed up to fight in urban environments.

But hadn't the immediate AO outside of the Gate been entirely hillsides and flatland? Itami's musings were cut down as the radio went up again.

_"Hey can someone who actually speaks Japanese get on the horn with the JSDF. We're fighting to see who goes first."_

_"We're all supposed to understand Jap you mongoloid."_

_ "I had to learn two new languages in three months how the fuck do you think that went?!"_

Kurata had been driver and RTO, turning down the volume as the cascade of radio comms went on and on. "Americans being loud as usual, eh?"

"Oh, it is what it is." Pops had patted down the radio set. "I've cross-trained with the Americans for the last two decades."

"I'm sorry." Kurata pinged back.

_ "This is Colonel Pierce to all Special Task Force elements; I will be assuming the headquarters callsign of Sicario Actual. I will be referred to by this name at all times as head of the United States Force in the Special Region. All elements on this net, confirm."_ From the American Middle West, Colonel Pierce had been that sort of American: the familiar, the stereotype, his voice rang out across the entire Special Task Force. It centered everyone as Kurata started the vehicle.

"Assassin, condition green." The Marines. The infantry of the 7th MEU.

"Warlord copies all." The American armored unit.

There was a rather obvious theme Itami picked up. It was all numbers and common titles for the JSDF units.

Over the net, it was Hazama's HQ vehicle:

_ "RCT3 we need a readback on final checks."_

Itami motioned for Pops to hand over the radio, and he did.

"RCT3. We're good." Itami confirmed.

"Copy. Standby."

The sound of air raid sirens had blared in the air as the giant metal creaking of the Gate's dome was split open.

The Gate itself was not touched past the first few scientific samples that did say it was indeed a mortal thing: of rock and marble and a particular funny looking gem on its crest. The Italian archeologists had been driven mad for it. The entire world had been driven mad by it and they were told to go in.

"We've got the call." Pops had confirmed over radio. "All RCTs move up and into position for insertion."

Itami nodded, raising one hand out of the window, making circles. Like an insect swarm, the vehicles of the JSDF emerged out of the alleyways of Ginza, lining the road, pointed at the Gate behind the tanks.

Like a roller coaster lining up for the ride.

Staring into the dark, this was the first time Itami had seen what the Gate actually looked like with his own eyes. It as Hitman that had stared right down the center of it, into the abyss. More than that, they had gone in first.

"Shit. We're going in there?"

One of RCT3 spoke up.

"Yes we are."

APCs and IFVs were all in line to roll in behind the tanks. Autocannons and MANPADS. A full military invasion. Asides from the Abrams the Americans had LAVs lined up with a majority of the Marines, artillery pieces by both sides being fielded as, at the very end, not due for entry until hours after the main incursion, the aviation and air power.

The seconds were being count down until, finally, the emissions from the tanks kicked up and the radio yelled out.

_"All Special Task Force elements, we are underway. Commence Operation Odyssey Ultimatum."_

_ "This is Warlord. We're moving through."_

"Hey, close that window." Kurata had advised Itami as it had remained open. Itami had sighed, taking in one deep breath before he acquiesced.

"Might be the last bit of air from this world we get for a while."

The Abrams had gone in, one at a time, melting into the dark, setting the tone, the pacing, as one by one the tanks disappeared and the RCTs were at the front now, waiting for the signal from the traffic controllers to continue past the dome, into the Gate, and into another world.

Thirty seconds passed; no words exchanged amongst RCT3.

Private thoughts remained however:

_ I hope this is over soon._

_ Hope I can still attend my daughter's wedding._

_ The Americans shouldn't be there._

_ Will there be cat girls?_

_ Please God, let me save as many as I can._

_ I wonder what it's going to be like? Fighting them?_

Itami wondered if they would get the wi-fi connection set up soon over there; another issue of a doujin was due out next week.

"Our turn." Kurata had held the wheel, white knuckled grip beneath gloves. The traffic controllers were waving them through.

Dipping his helmet lid to cover his eyes, Itami had leaned back. "Let's go."

For the hundreds of JSDF and USMC soldiers who crossed the divide and saw what oblivion looked like on the way to another world, it would've been a moment in life that they had the rare knowledge that this was history. For Itami, it was the same either way as he closed his eyes and thought of a normal life he wanted to live. What was happening to him was just something that he couldn't help.

Pure silence save for the vehicles, the monotonous drone of driving forward. Onward into battle. Eventually they had made it.

Out to their front the twinkle, not of stars: but torches and camps. The ground beneath their vehicles wheels had been dirt again, and Itami opened his eyes.

Go time underneath the blue moon.

* * *

It was like exiting a toll road as unfamiliar troops directed and guided on foot the vehicles as they came out. In short order, one had come to Itami's window and he rolled down. An American, undoubtedly based on the gear; special forces. It could've only been one man.

"Hey Youji." Kay Emerson.

To Itami, Emerson was a bright young man. Despite the color of his skin, he glowed wherever he was as a regular man. It was his very presence that had calmed people, that had assured them. Regular guy was right for him, and, as Itami laid eyes on the Rangers, he couldn't tell one from another, the green and grey smear of their kit and uniforms sent his brain into an overdrive, trying to recognize the figures. Balaclavas and masks, scarves and keffiyehs hid all of their faces.

They were like the units on his gacha games, faceless from above, their designs imposing and dangerous, speaking to what they did.

They had gotten off their stomachs, manning their weapons as they directed tanks into their positions forward, pushing forward with them to the very rim of the hill's top. Despite the fact it was morning, their kits, their clothes, it had all soaked in darkness.

"We've got your positions marked follow our lead!" It was Emerson's voice that had been how the Special Task Force was greeted to the new world. "Welcome to the **Special Region**!"

Emerson hadn't even had his rifle ready, slung across his back. Hitman, in their special forces garb, had appeared in a rush as each vehicle and tank appeared out of the void, their arms up and directing them into fighting position, dirt on their elbows and hands as they had been busy erecting fighting positions.

Kurata immediately pegged the way Emerson had used Itami's name. "You know this guy?"

It was a question ignored as Itami asked another. "Any contact?"

Emerson shook his head. "A few clicks out. No movement. Daybreak is soon, get moving we'll talk later."

"Right."

As soon as he had appeared Emerson had gone as Hitman had made their presence known, talking to drivers of each vehicle as slowly, an armored perimeter was set and the new entries into the Special Region got their bearings: all of them situated north. The enemy amassing, seen by lamplight and fire.

Troops from both sides piled out of their vehicles, finding firing positions and trenches to dig into as auto gunners set up machine guns and the mortars locked down.

The rush of procedure, the military bravado that combat was coming, was soon, that this was why they were here, it rushed into the veins of the Special Task Force as each of them dealt with a question a Texan Ranger, there for hours already, had to reckon with himself.

Shortly, the HQ vehicle had rolled up through the Gate.

"Your number, Kay." Bannon had tapped his helmet as she rushed around, making sure positions were good, gesturing to the APC containing General Hazama and Colonel Pierce.

Before Emerson could rush up to it, the APC had let out, its passengers disembarking; most namely Hazama with a procession of JSDF officers and a pair of binoculars, seeing the enemy mass out in the distance.

He didn't report to Hazama however, he reported to Pierce with a report hours in the making in his head describing force composition, movements, and a plan of action that would make sure they would rout. He had begun with gusto, saluting the Colonel. Pierce saluted him down, but eyes were otherwise focused on Hazama.

"Our visual recon-" Emerson was cut short.

"Is not needed." Pierce had gestured behind Emerson, to the Type-74s. There was a vital piece of American doctrine that was not carried over at this moment. It was a doctrine made in the time since Iraq, since the recognition of a sane and comprehensible idea that, in order to be engage, you must be engaged.

But they had been engaged. Engaged since Ginza.

"Ears on." Bannon had ordered and the Rangers had put their hearing protection from their helmets down, looking away and moving away from the tanks they had helped put in place. The traversal of all their turrets out and forward, it spoke to something immediate.

_"Sicario Actual. What's the call?" _A call from one of the Warlords, the Abrams and their commanders poking out of their hatches back toward Pierce as he looked on from that hill and saw what Masterson saw hours before. Every vehicle had been in position, the coil primed to spring.

Emerson had thought Masterson would've needed this to happen, wanted this to happen, the second he had gotten over. But forward recon changed him immediately. It was no longer an attacking army, it was just people, sitting in place, defenseless.

This was who they were charged to kill.

If Pierce was ever going to say something, it was drowned out as the first 105-millimeter guns of the Type 74s had opened up, in sync. The bright stars of a tank round, red hot, flying down range was tracked by all those who could, all the way out, forward, disappearing into the ring of a Roman army accruing a mile and a half down and away.

The stars disappeared, only to bury themselves into the ground, and, in one fell swoop, explode.

The earth quaked, the ground was moved, the shockwave of an explosion came a second later.

To engage, you must be engaged.

Pierce shook his head. Better fast than longer. "All Warlords, you're free to engage." The quicker, the better.

Emerson had been left standing as Pierce just let it play out, left with nothing to do but stand there and see what the JSDF really wanted.

The Abrams had their command hatches popped as the TCs looked out, seeing what everyone else saw: the Japanese were engaging.

Every shot had felt of a punch in one's heart as the volley that kicked off the war on this side of the Gate began, and it was from the Japanese. Pierce's RTO had nodded over as they confirmed over comms. "We're engaged."

_Yeah I can see that._ Pierce had glowered.

The great roars had been of metal machines, not of dragons. Not of monsters.

Distant thunder, great looms of dirt and smoke, particles of people.

Hitman, Itami, all of them looked out into the dark and saw the flames of superior firepower so impersonally open up.

Emerson had ducked back into a trench with the rest of Hitman.

"What's the over under on each of those?" Immediately he was bombarded with questions. It was from Masterson.

Emerson sat down, holding his rifle between his legs. "Each of those what, Cam? Not like I know you to not use words."

Another round, another volley. The pumps of explosion beating into their bones.

Masterson continued, licking his lips, his leg bouncing as he sat braced against the trench. "That's about the same amount that came at Ginza. Took us two and a half days to clean up. How fast you think this'll be?"

Emerson could only pat his helmet down as he sat in his trench, looking out, and then away. He could give no answer as he thought back to a common Roman man who had come to fight them. He lost, and was captured. His name was Mercaius. He could've been any one of those soldiers out there, and so each and every one of them had been Mercaius to him as the explosions rocked and the JSDF invaded.

* * *

A conversation with the enemy. There was a question that needed to be asked. Not for practice, not for practical knowledge, but it was a complete and utter need. Something in Emerson's head echoed up and down, up and down, up and down demanding, begging, wanting something of him that was insanity.

It was insanity.

Heard not only in his head, but in the head of every single person in Hitman. In Masterson. In Bannon. In Loke. In Harris. In Valentine. In everyone.

_Kill them all._

He had a .45 in his holster right now. Right between his eyes. Blow his fucking brains out.

_Kill them all._

_ For my family._

He asked a question instead.

"Tell me, Mercaius, why did you attack?"

Mercaius had looked so thoughtful, hearing those words translated, and he answered truthfully. "Tell me, Kay Emerson. Are you not a soldier yourself?"

Itami rose his eyebrow as Emerson asked. It wasn't a question on the list they had prepared. Emerson would tell himself in the weeks after that it just was something he thought of on the fly but that was a **complete** lie.

He had been trying to translate the words to the question ever since the material had been out.

"I am." Emerson answered.

"Then, you know, orders are orders. They are the orders my father followed, and his grandfather before that. They are the orders of our Emperor that has built our home for my family. Why would I not follow them?"

"Because you killed the innocent."

"Is this not how one conquers? Is this not how militaries invade?"

Emerson had spoken. "No."

* * *

**Haditha Massacre**

A series of killings on November 19, 2005, in which a group of United States Marines killed 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians. The youngest of these victims was two years old. Killed execution-style in a neighborhood in Iraq, the Marines lied afterwards saying their actions were spurred on by combative fire that never happened.

None of the eight Marines ever saw jailtime.

* * *

"Then am I guilty of failing my family? Of the history that has created a life for me?"

Family.

For his family.

He continued, as if insulted. "I have, for five years, served in my legion without complaint, without disregard. I have been a father, for five years, and yet I have not seen my child. It was this campaign, my last campaign, that would be the one before Emperor Molt rewards me for my service and grants me the land for an estate. A place for my…" Mercaius looked for a word. "My future."

Mercaius believed in God. In loyalty. In service. Was he not a good man?

"The success of my Emperor, of our Empire, is my success. Is it not the same for the powers you hold yourself to?"

_ Why did you do it?_

_ Because it was the right thing to do. A good thing to do._

All Emerson and Itami could do was sit there in silence, and wait for him to be taken away.


End file.
